Sidewalk Cleaning Becomes Latest Weapon in Vendor Wars
We all know how buildings have used planter boxes to keep unwanted street vendors from parking in front of their real estate, but this morning a building on 59th btw. Park+Lex took a different tactic: cleaning the sidewalks. Wafels and Dinges added another cart-not a truck- to their fleet recently (you might have seen the original South St. Seaport cart on our Downtown site) debuting it this morning on 59th. In retaliation, the building surrounded the cart with cones, and proceeded to power wash the sidewalks. In the rain. W&D stood their ground, but around Noon the cops came and kicked them out of the spot (presumably because the building complained?) They’re still looking for a new spot. As of 2:50pm they’re on 58th btw. Lex+3rd.
The silver lining in all this is the Wafels and Dinges Truck has a new cart that they plan on parking in under-served areas of the city (including Midtown!) And, since it is a cart it will have a slightly easier time finding parking than the truck (even though that wasn’t the case today.) Follow them on Twitter for the location of the new cart.
Posted by Zach Brooks at 2:30 pm, September 30th, 2010 under Street Vendor Issues, Wafels and Dinges.
5 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
Such over kill, I mean can they make it more obvious? Power washing in the rain? LOL