January 26, 2007
OLD SCHOOL--GOOD TIMES MAY BE HERE AGAIN
One of my fondest/funniest roadtrip memories comes from the mid-1990s, when I and my travelling companions ran into something that younger readers may have no familiarity with. It's called the Squeegee Man.
Driving north from DC to an upstate suburb over some winter break, we made a wrong turn and failed to bypass driving through NYC. Suddenly we were uptown and cruising through the south Bronx in a cream colored station wagon at dusk. All our paranoiac suburban white-kid nightmares were being realized. We pulled up to a red light and were going to use the opportunity to consult a map and get our bearings when a raggedy looking homeless man heaved himself across the side of our station wagon's hood. Spraying some unidentifiable liquid across the windshield, he began to vigorously scrub away with a crumbpled piece of newspaper and his forearm's sleeve. Once the windshield had been "cleaned", he presented himself at the passenger-side door asking for payment. Amid shouts of "Don't pay that f***er anything!" "Give 'em a dollar!" and "I think he's going to kill us!", the front-seat passenger finally inched down the electric window two millimieters and fed a dollar bill out of the crack like he was trying to buy a bag of Skittles out of a vending machine. I don't think I've ever laughed harder, sprawled in the backseat.
Stuff like that doesn't happen much anymore. One of Rudolph Giuliani's first initiatives when he was elected may in 1994 was to eliminate nuiscance criminal behavior like "Squeegee Men", identifying them as low-level extortionists blights on the city. He was almost completely successful; I haven't seen in a Squeegee Man in ages. Until yesterday afternoon.
I was walking down 2nd Ave. Thursday afternoon in a strolling fugue state. My iPod suddenly went on the blitz [a trip to the Apple Store showed that it was due to exposure to freezing temperatures] and I looked up to see the faces of a horrified man and woman in a Mercedes waiting for the light so they could cross the 59th St. Bridge. And there was a homeless-looking man, leaning across their hood, spraying some unidentifiable liquid, and smearing their windshield with a rag. It was a Squeegee Man!
I have been walking the streets of NYC for approximately a decade now, with my eyes open and always looking for something unusual. This is the first Squeegee Man I have seen in all that time. I was tempted to call a local news affiliate, but it was freezing and I had iPod problems to address.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at January 26, 2007 10:45 PM
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