Live crabs. Bras with rhinestones. Old shoes. Frayed electrical cords. Knock-off Louis Vuitton clutches. Disposable face masks. Mets caps.
Illegal street vendors prowling such items have taken over the suburbs, clogging sidewalks with their second-hand items, and pulling shoppers from pandemic-ravaged mom-and-pop shops.
And everyone points the finger at Mayor de Blasio.
From Brooklyn to the Bronx, Staten Island and Queens, folding tables and mats rolled out across the ground force pedestrians to go a single row or step aside so they don’t get run over.
In the Bronx, 149th Street and Fordham Road are hotspots. So are Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and Flushing’s Main Street, especially the few blocks from the post office on Sanford Avenue to the 7 train station on Roosevelt Avenue.
On Main, between Sanford and 41st Avenue, The Post had 27 street vendors – on one side of the street. Two yellow permits issued, showing that they are military veterans. Six shake their heads as if they didn’t understand English. The others turned or looked down when asked to show their driver’s license.
DianSong Yu of the Flushing Business Improvement District estimates that 90 percent of sellers are unlicensed. According to the Street Vendor Project, an advocacy group, the number of salespeople across the city is about 20,000. But legal holders of general merchandise, excluding mobile food sellers, total a few thousand.
“It’s a very difficult time for everyone, we get it,” Yu told The Post. “But we have to be fair to the local merchant who pays very high rent and taxes. And they hurt. “
Bobby has a yellow permit for his place on Main – and he loves the undercover officers. ‘They’re robbing the city of taxes. They’re taking money from the veterans. They’re taking jobs, ”said Bobby, not wanting to give his last name but telling The Post he fought in Vietnam.
Licenses are issued by the Department of Consumer Affairs. The city limits non-veteran general supplier licenses to 853 and charges a fee of $ 100 or $ 200, depending on the time of year an applicant submits. Any honorably discharged veteran can be licensed for free.
In Sanford and Main you can find live blue crabs. Peddlers stack their wooden bushel three high and sell the shellfish for a dollar each.
Whether the crabs are legal or safe to eat is a mystery. No agency could tell The Post with certainty, and no one took responsibility for the oversight.
New York State allows crabs in the waters around Queens, but has restrictions on size and number of catches. It issues permits for large shipments.
But the regulatory agency, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, doesn’t need a trade license to sell the crabs. The city’s health department issues permits for mobile food vendors, who cannot sell raw seafood, but does not supervise the street vendors.
The wife of a licensed seller bought a decade ago, on objections from her husband, who did not work during the pandemic due to chronic lung disease.
“She figured out what could go wrong … well enough,” said the husband who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity.
That night she nibbled on crab legs. Not long after, she began to feel nauseous and her husband decided to dissect the scraps in search of clues. He found white worms in the stomach. The health department is investigating, spokesman Patrick Gallahue told The Post.
“I was an illegal salesman,” admitted the husband, who is now in his 70s. ‘I can understand if you can start selling. Why not? But the situation has gotten out of hand – outrageously out of control. “
At 39th and Main, Ira Dananberg gazes down on the crushing humanity from his second-floor hearing aid company, Acousticon of Flushing.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dananberg, who has been at his site for 19 years. “People literally have no choice but to walk on each other.”
He is concerned because most of his clients are older and use a cane or a walker. And they get intimidated by the crowds.
From January through December 21, there were a total of 2,907 complaints from illegal street vendors in the five boroughs – despite the city being detained for 78 days. The figure for 2019: 3,101.
For the first nine months of 2020, the NYPD wrote 28 tickets to unlicensed sellers. Last year this was 173.
Dananberg, Bobby and a host of others blame de Blasio, who ordered the NYPD to stop targeting illegal hawkers in early June – part of a package of policy changes he announced after more than a week of violent Black Lives Matter protests.
“It’s a circus,” said Councilor Peter Koo, who introduced a bill two years ago banning all vending machines – even food carts – on Main Street. “This falls entirely on the mayor.”
Dananberg filed a pair of 311 complaints online, which were forwarded to the NYPD’s 109th Precinct. The responding agents told Dananberg their hands were tied because of Hizzoner’s moratorium.
NYPD spokeswoman Det. Sophia Mason told The Post that the police are still handling complaints from suppliers.
But enforcement will switch from the NYPD to Consumer Affairs on Jan. 15, Blasio spokeswoman Laura Feyer told The Post.
“We remain committed to a diverse commercial ecosystem, where all kinds of small businesses coexist and contribute to vibrant street life,” she said.