New York City Drives Street Vendors to Operate Illegally—Century After Century: New at Reason

New York City has a long history of making life difficult for those looking to make themselves upwardly mobile.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

“This is not supposed to look like a souk,” then-Mayor Ed Koch complained in 1988 about the lines of carts and customers on midtown streets. He ordered a strict crackdown on pushcart vendors that inconvenienced hungry customers but economically crippled struggling entrepreneurs, some of whose carts were confiscated. “Souk” is just a word for marketplace, which is where people buy and sell goods and create prosperity. If a city isn’t supposed to look like a souk, it’s hard to visualize how it should look.

The limits Koch put in place are still in effect. But he was hardly the first offender—or the first person to express contempt for the sight of largely immigrant vendors working hard to feed their families.

“[T]he practical disadvantages from the undue congestion of peddlers in certain localities are so great as to lead to a demand in many quarters for the entire abolition of this industry, if it may be dignified by the term,” sniffed the Report of the Mayor’s Push-Cart Commission in 1906.

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