BY MARC ADLER | On Sunday, around 10:30 a.m., I was walking down Eighth Street by the intersection of Sixth Avenue, and I noticed some 1-800-GOT-JUNK people removing the shed in front of Culture An American Yogurt Company.
Great, I thought…the owner realized that he did not need that dilapidated shed anymore and called some people to remove it. I snapped a photo of the demolition.
About 90 minutes later, I returned to the spot and found an employee of the yogurt store in some despair. She said that the 1-800-GOT-JUNK people uncovered various rat nests and that the rats started to attack them. The wreckers decided they could not proceed with the demolition and just left the area.
What was remaining was a huge pile of garbage and dead rats. The yogurt worker did not know what to do. I told her to call the Department of Sanitation because they might be best equipped to handle this. The worker did not want to have to clean this mess up herself. This is the kind of trash and infestation that might be lying underneath almost every shed.
And, okay, goodbye to the sheds. Yet, please: No more personal vehicles littering our streets in their wake.
Personal vehicles don’t litter the streets…but based on this post, I very much doubt you realize there’s 4 whole other boroughs filled with people who not only enjoy having personal freedom when moving about the city, or *gasp* require a car.
Charging them $23 a trip will not improve city infrastructure or reduce traffic congestion because no one in NYC drives around “just ’cause,” like it’s a video game or something.
But most people who live in Manhattan (pretty much the only people in favor of this) are out of touch with the rest of the world, so it only makes sense.
Ah, the working class and the middle class…the backbone of America until the rich decide that we’re all rich.
Two women that live in my building are Emergency Room Nurses. One starts her shift at 6AM in Queens. I am glad she has a car to take her to work at 5AM in the morning. The other 1st Responder ends her shift at 1 am. I am glad she has a car to drive home at that time. Numerous people that you want to get to work at atypical times need transportation. Public transportation is great but many times not the best option. I would not consider their cars and many others who serve New Yorkers at critical times to be littering. I do however consider sheds that block residential entrances for FDNY and EMS, plus the rats underneath the sheds, the REAL LITTERERS — and they don’t pay anything for public space.
the mayor should pay attention to the reality of the rat-source… the sheds…. in so doing the city will eliminate the proliferation of the vermin population.
curious that this fact (sheds) of rat population explosion is never mentioned in the mayor’s media vignettes.
hospitality lobby cover-up perhaps??
Was walking past the Mamoun’s uptown on Columbus the other night and multiple rats running in and out of their sidewalk shed. Dreck.
I tweeted about this horror show about 4 times. I guess they finally were guilted into taking it down.
The rats weren’t giving up their home, though. This is the Stonewall of restaurant rat sheds.
https://twitter.com/ImpunityCity/status/1596077622970441734
The problem here is when the crumbs left over from the Dumblasio administration will try to take away that parking space that should be for NYC residents and/or their guests, in order to plop down a dumbass Citibike station or some painted asphalt with neon colors like the idiocy taking place in various parts of Downtown Brooklyn.
How about you leave the city alone and get back to your avocado toast?
Or better yet? Just leave
You said it beautifully, and I would go farther. For example, ticket all those people who take up street space with their out-of-state license plates…..not so much the day trippers but those who buy their vehicles elsewhere, pay cheaper tax and insurance elsewhere and keep their cars here. Give residents a residential parking permit; you know — those New Yorkers who pay taxes. We, the hard-working people who live here, are now subsidizing the restaurant and movie industries, CitiBank’s advertising budget with ubiquitous bikes, yearslong construction projects for mega-mansions in places like the West Village and who knows what else. The Mayor loves the sheds because he can collect more city taxes from street dining. Why doesn’t he use his brain (which he allegedly has) and figure out a better way to raise taxes….like making the multimillionaires who push up local rents by taking up all our space with their multimillion-dollar pied-a-terre apartments and condos. There are tons of ways the city could make developers pay….. instead of we the people paying them (a policy for which we can blame another mayor: Bloomberg). Why do we have to continue this level of corruption? Let the people protest. Enough already.
My only hope is that I see this in my lifetime. Enough already.
I’ve been to a couple other large cities in other countries this month that both had plenty of streeteries but no rat problem. The big difference was that those cities containerized their trash rather than leaving it out on the street.
Come on, Sven. Those rats probably fed mostly from their mother’s teet. I saw and filmed a shanty being taken down in progress and about 40 rats scurried out right where people were waiting on line to get into restaurants in Koreatown. And what you just said justifies the plaintiffs’ case for bringing an end to these vile shanties — we don’t have the trash infrastructure to handle it. And we never will because the city is broke.
The city is inundated with rats — it’s like a horror movie. We’ve got to remove ALL the sheds and clean up this city. Thank you so much for covering this and covering it a lot. Keep it up.
Rat motels. They should be paying rent. The Big Apple-visionary-zealotry-commerce-above all else.
There is absolutely no reason for a yogurt shop to need an outdoor shed, how ridiculous.
Now get rid of the rest of the sheds!
You know that’s what’s under most if not all. Unbelievable.
Just like Paris xoxo
😂 Exactly!
Just like Stonewall. But for rodents.