Vendors booted from Brooklyn Bridge as new ban goes into effect: ‘Like night and day’
It was easy street for pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday as Mayor Eric Adams followed through on his promise to boot vendors from the historic span.
City workers labored overnight to sweep up the final remnants of the hawkers who “packed together like sardines,” blocking a popular path on the bridge and creating a safety hazard for pedestrians, Adams said last week.
The move came as a relief to many locals.
“This is a great thing they did,” Brooklyn Heights resident Alan Posner said.
“This morning was the first time I saw baby carriages and strollers and people in wheelchairs going across the bridge in years. There’s no way they could have been crossing like this yesterday.”
Retired MTA worker David Rico, who said he walks the bridge once a week to visit his mother in a Brooklyn nursing home, said the landmark’s new look is “definitely better.”
“I walked this exact same route the day before yesterday, Monday, and you couldn’t get by with the congestion,” he said. “Safer too. I got to say, the fact that the vendors are unregulated and they’re selling food that, you know, you really don’t know about their hygiene standards so I never ate that food.
“I feel bad for them but I think it’s better that they’re not here.”
Diane, a 63-year-old lawyer who wal💟ks the crossing regularly, called it a pleasure to have a clear path now.
“It’s like night and day,” she said. “This was a good move. But I’m afraid they’ll be back in a month. The city cleared them out before and they came right back.”
The new rule, which prohibits vending on pedestrian walkways and bike lanes on bridges and bridge approaches, will affect all Big Apple crossings — but wa🤡s specifically made to target the Brooklyn Bridge.
It was first proposed in October, months after the 1.14-mile-long historic landmark turned into an open-a🌠ir free-for-all.
Dozens of peddlers hawked a variety of oddities, including miniature Statues of Liberty, pot-leaf caps and stuffed llamas, as well as illegal cocktails a𒀰nd selfies with a live snake.
Few of꧟ the vendors were equipped with a legal license when The Post visited in September.
However, not everyone was celebrating the move.
Kendall Otway, 67, Navy veteran with a city vendor license, was joined by more than 30 migrants at the foot of the bridge,꧂ sayi꧟ng the hawking stations provided many of them with their only income.
“They’re here and they’re working. They’re doing the best they can. They don’t have the paper so they can’t just do other jobs,” Otway said. “They buy the merchandise. They get the stuff from the wholesale stores. They buy it on 28th Street and Broadway. You know, wallets and hats and keychains and then they double the price.
“Like some of these stores triple the price,” he said. “But I understand because they got rent and whatever to pay. But my people aren’t gouging the price. They’re only doubling it.”
