By: Hellen Zaboulani
In the 90’s, the busy streets of Manhattan used to have squeegee men waiting by the intersections to aggressively approach cars and start washing their windows- like it or not. Well, those days are back.
On Monday, an organized crew of squeegee men were ‘at work’ belligerently wiping down windshields just blocks from Times Square on West 40th Street near Ninth Avenue.
As reported by the NY Post, the crew included four squeegee men. There was a fifth man, acting as supervisor who guided them in a way similar to an air traffic regulator—directing them towards the expensive cars primarily with New Jersey license plates. Not all of the men wore masks while interacting with the drivers. The men seemed to have stashed their equipment nearby overnight under a green tarp, and filled their buckets with water from the nearby Port Authority bathroom. The cops “don’t f–k with us — no summons, no nothing,” one of the men said.
One driver only opened his window a crack to fork over some cash, but another motorist exchanged a fist bump with a squeegee man. Overall, the men’s reception was less than enthusiastic. A 57-year-old woman who encountered the men on Sunday, described her “heart racing” as “a creepy guy” approached her vehicle. “He came toward me. I said, ‘No, no, I don’t need to be squeegeed,” she said. “Meanwhile, it’s raining. He said, ‘Do you have any money?’ And I said ‘No, I have absolutely no money.’” But the man looked at her wallet which was on the passenger seat and said, “You are lying. You have money. Give me money,” she recalled. “He was more than harassing me. He was wildly aggressive…As a woman in a car, that’s just an awful scene.” She added: “I remember the bad old days in New York. This is one of the things that was there.” Nearby merchants also complained about the squeegee men frightening their customers away. “They are dangerous. Sometimes they fight — they turn on each other,” said Farhana Farooq, owner of the nearby LaSani Grill.
Under a 2016 law, it’s illegal to aggressively approach a motorist “for the purpose of either performing or offering to perform a service in connection with such vehicle.” Violators face a fine of $100, and maximum of 16 days in jail. “We used to lock up squeegee guys, but the district attorney won’t prosecute — so we stopped,” a Manhattan cop said. “We can give them a summons but they could give their name as Fred Flintstone. The quality of life will only continue to decline unless the laws are changed.”