Tag Archives | Brooklyn

In the late 1980’s, around the time that the grimy streets of New York City lay in stark contrast to the colorful tops of crack vials that filled them, Squeegee Man was born. The city was broke and broken. Ronald Reagan and his conservative agenda forced the city to put its budget to the guillotine. Some enterprising crackhead took the conservative’s “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric to heart and realized that with a squeegee and a bucket, he could make a buck. At any given traffic stop in the city, Squeegee Man would run up on your car, splash some piss on your windshield, squeegee it off with one hand and ask for money with the other. Sometimes there’d be a few Squeegee Men at a light who’d try to out-maneuver each other or they’d gang squeegee your shit and they’d all be expecting to get paid for it. By the 90’s, it seemed that Squeegee Man would find you at every traffic light in the boroughs and he’d be mad aggressive too. It reached the point where Squeegee Man would put a dent in your car if you didn’t throw him some coin after muddying up your shit, unsolicited. It got so bad that Rudy Guiliani ran for NYC Mayor on an Anti-Squeegee Man platform. Continue Reading →