New York City enforces its street cleaning day rules with the power of shame, plastering impossible-to-remove violation stickers onto every mis-parked car. The stickers' reign of terror is now a thing of the past as The New York Times reports the city council banned them yesterday.
When the stickers were introduced in 1987, Brendan Saxton, the NYC Sanitation Commissioner at the time, said that scraping the stickers off a car window should take people ''long enough that they have to think about it.'' Yesterday the city council decided that the barnacle-like resistance put up by the stickers is completely absurd.
What makes this such a terrible infraction that you have to be punished in such a serious way? It's not reasonable behavior in the 21st century.
Spectators applauded at Councilman Greenfield's assessment.
Still, the Sanitation Department offered a considerable piece of evidence against the ban, noting that on the department's trademark cleanliness scale, street cleanliness rose from an average rating of 73 before the stickers were introduced to a rating of 94.8 today. Without the stickers, it's hard to see New Yorkers bothering with the hassle of moving a street parked car every week, even if they have to pay a ticket.
Photo Credit: Chris Young