Street vendors gone from Brooklyn Bridge as NYC enforces ban aimed at pedestrian safety

NEW YORK — Street vendors were gone from the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday as the city enforced a ban aimed at improving pedestrian safety on the iconic East River crossing that is a popular tourist destination.

Dozens of street vendors hawking art, food and tourist tchotchkes crowded the bridge’s Manhattan approaches until they were cleared out under the new city regulation, which was first proposed in October.

Videos posted to social media Tuesday night showed vendors packing up under the eye of nearby police officers.

“Why [are] you f—ing with me, Mayor Adams?” one man, purportedly a vendor, shouts in one video as NYPD officers look on.

“We don’t cause trouble, we don’t cause a disturbance. We sell merchandise, and we clean up after our mess,” the unidentified man continued.

“Now you want me to be homeless?” he yelled. “Now you want me to sell drugs again? You want me to shoot and rob [people]?”

A release from the city’s Transportation Department, which oversees the bridge, said Wednesday that “NYPD enforcement of the new rule will begin after robust vendor outreach.”

A DOT notice posted on a bridge lamppost Wednesday morning stated that the city confiscated eight tables overnight. Vendors were told they could retrieve them from a DOT facility in Brooklyn.

Another half-dozen folding tables were leaned up against a gate at the foot of the bridge on the Manhattan side, with no owners in sight. A work crew in bright DOT jackets bolted a sign that read “No Vending Allowed” to a fence.

Eric Nava Perez, a community organizer with the Street Vendor Project, said cops and DOT workers confiscated more than just tables.

“They took some of their merchandise,” Perez said Wednesday as he stood with about a dozen table-less vendors at the base of the bridge.

“It’s terrible,” he continued. “What are we supposed to do now? In terms of income, we can’t wait until some type of legislation is passed, or [for] some kind of long-term solution. Bills are still going to continue to pile up.”

Kendall Otway, a U.S. Navy veteran who has a city permit to hawk scarves, hats, gloves and jewelry, said the money he’d made on the bridge was a necessary supplement to his military pension.

“This is a bad day at the farm,” said Otway, 67. “This is New York. They should be allowing us to make money. This is what the city is supposed to be about.”

Otway said he worried some of the other vendors, especially those who are undocumented, will be in even worse straits. “This is their whole income,” he said.

City officials say the ban is necessary due to record numbers of people using the bridge’s central walkway.

An average fall weekend day in 2022 saw 34,000 people crossing the bridge, up from 17,000 a day in 2021, according to DOT data.

“The ability of pedestrians to exit the bridge safely is jeopardized by vendors who display and store their wares, carts, tables, tents, tarps, canopies, coolers, and generators along the elevated pedestrian walkway, impeding pedestrian traffic flow,” reads the city’s formal announcement of the ban.

“It’s not only a sanitary issue, it’s a public safety issue,” Mayor Adams said Tuesday when asked about the ban.

Adams said he’d been driving over the bridge on a recent weekend when he saw people lowering themselves from the walkway onto the lower bike path to escape the congestion.

“I’m not quite understanding those that are not clear that you can’t have a bridge lined up on both sides with vendors selling all sorts of items,” Adams said. “If you needed an emergency egress to get off the bridge, people would have trampled over each other. We need order in this city.”

City officials said outreach to vendors began Friday.

“We flyered, we let them know, the rules were initially published in October,” Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi said Tuesday. “Flyers went out. DOT will be holding property, if it’s left on the bridge, at a safe and convenient location so people can come by and pick it up.”

Joshi said she expected the rules to be well-received by city residents.

“I think New Yorkers are going to really appreciate the change,” she said. “They’re going to appreciate being able to walk across that bridge, have the freedom to move freely.”

But some city lawmakers are trying to find a happy medium.

City Council members Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) and Amanda Farías (D-Bronx) have introduced a bill that would strictly regulate where vendors could set up, but still allow some to hawk their wares on the famous span.

“There’s no question that right now it’s not in good shape,” Brewer said of the vending situation on Brooklyn Bridge, “but I think that, as our bill suggests, some vendors should be allowed to operate.”

The bill would ban vendors from the Manhattan-side plaza, one of the largest bottlenecks, and from any section of walkway narrower than 16 feet — the average width of the pedestrian path.

Vendors would also be required to stay at least 20 feet apart from each other, among other provisions.

“There’s a middle ground to be had,” Brewer said. “There’s a win for tourists, there’s a win for vendors and there’s a win for the city if this is done the right way. There’s a benefit in helping people earn a livelihood.”

Brewer introduced the bill last year, but it failed to come up for a vote.

She told the Daily News on Wednesday it’s “in the hopper” to be reintroduced this session, and said she’s hopeful it’ll advance.

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