Everyone knows them and almost every motorist dreads them. They spray your windshield with who-knows-what and you're almost forced to pay them. According to The New York Post, squeegee men, the ultimate symbol of lawlessness and blight of the 1980s and early 1990s, are back.
Squeegee men have recently been seen heckling motorists across New York City, including areas near the Holland, Queens-Midtown and Lincoln tunnel and the Queensboro Bridge.
Drivers who pass through the area as well as residents say they are spraying and wiping car windshields without permission in order to shake down drivers for money.
The NY Post credits their return to an ominous sign according to the already proven "broken windows" theory that has kept the city safe by having cops crack down on minor offenses in order to prevent bigger, violent crimes.
The NY Post came across one squeegee man on the corner of Lexington and East 37th Street. A woman who saw him turned on the wipers of her Mercedes-Benz to keep him away.
The glassy-eyed man, according to the NY post, said his name is Mike Benthins. He is originally from Philadelphia and spends about an hour at the corner every day or so.
"This is a couple of days' work. About 14 bucks," he told the NY Post while displaying a handful of crumpled dollar bills in his dirty, cracked fingers.
Benthins had also been seen with squeegee gear near Times Square. He uses a copy of the am NewYork free newspaper as a rag.
But the return of squeegee men is not being received well by residents.
Maria Berrios, 49, has lived in Midtown near the Lincoln Tunnel for 30 years and was shocked to see a squeegee man at the corner of Dyer Avenue and West 36th Street two weeks ago.
"He looked like he learned how to do it way back in the day. He just picked up his bucket and went back to work," she told the NY Post. "I haven't seen those guys in 20 years. I'm a grandma now--the last time I saw one of them, by kids were in the car," Berrios added. "When I seen that one, I was f--king shocked," while saying he hides his squeegee gear and "pretends to direct traffic" when cops come by.
And delivery driver German Perez, 43, of Bayside, Queense, said, "I don't feel secure when I see these guys around. If they come up to my car, and it's on a dark street, of course, it scares me," he said. "Then sometimes they argue, 'I'm not getting enough money,' or I'll tell him no because the car is really clean, and they'll still try to do it and then argue with me," Perez adds. "I wish they would stop."
But with almost 10 million unemployed Americans and 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., according to NBC News, the competition for low wage jobs is likely to get worse and we may begin to see more squeegee men in big cities across the country.
Robert Bannan, a 25-year-old elevator mechanic of Marine Park, Brooklyn, has seen the squeegee men while driving and wants the city to take action.
"They really have to do something," he said. "They just gotta nip it in the bud before it becomes a situation that's out of control and the city gets really bad."
The comeback of the squeegee men came back despite Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton's publicly-stated support for a continuing crackdown on "quality-of-life" crimes, the NY Post reported.
Bratton ran the squeegee men out of business during his first stint as top cop under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who labeled them a "menace" in his mayoral campaign in 1993, the NY Post reports.
One squeegee man working on the side of the Queensboro Bridge defended his craft to the NY Post on Thursday.
"Doing it this way is better than going out and selling drugs, sticking people up," said the squeegee man that wouldn't give his name. I'd rather be doing this than to go back to what I was doing before Giuliani came into office: pimping ... selling drugs, all that. I need to pay rent, and this is the best way to do it."
Another squeegee man working the same corner, who said he makes $60 a day, told the NY Post, "The reason Giuliani put such a stress on it is because of a couple bad apples in downtown Manhattan who would do something to your car if you didn't give them money. Over here, we don't do that," said the man who identified himself as Richie Jonson, an alias. "We're not doing harm to your car, no bodily harm. Just trying to get a dollar, 50 cents, a quarter--whatever you can spare."
