A squeegee man or squeegee woman, squeegee kid (Canada), squeegee punk (Montreal), squeegee merchant (London) or squeegee bandit[1] is a person who, washcloth and squeegee in hand, wipes windshields of cars stopped in traffic and then solicits money from drivers.
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In Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg they are known as squeegee kids and they were mostly tolerated, since they were considered to be working for money, rather than begging. In Montreal they are often called squeegee punks,[2] in reference to their appearance, or simply squeegees.[3] In 1999 the Ontario government passed the Safe Streets Act, outlawing squeegee kids and aggressive public begging. Squeegee kids have become scarce on Toronto and Vancouver curbsides, as police frequently stop them and check their identities for outstanding arrest warrants.
In 2011, Deputy Mayor of Toronto Doug Holyday told the Toronto Sun that there was the will in council to step up action against panhandlers, including squeegee kids;[4] the proposition was mocked by some media, given the previous efforts, and the suggestion that the homeless would have to pay fines.[5] A few days later, on June 7, a man was attacked with a squeegee by a 23-year-old at Queen Street and Spadina Avenue. The alleged attacker was charged, and the driver admitted to hospital, to deal with the gash.[6]
Londoners, and perhaps others, extend the appellation to include those who roam in the midst of stopped traffic to not only wash windscreens, but also hawk items such as roses and newspapers. For this reason, they are sometimes called squeegee merchants.
While squeegee men are a feature of life in many cities around the world, the phenomenon first became prevalent in New York City in the 1980s. The usual procedure would involve groups of squeegee men surrounding cars stopped in traffic. Although some merely provided a service, in other cases the windshield-washing would be carried out without asking, often perfunctorily, and with subsequent demands for payment, sometimes with added threats of smashing the car's windshield if their demands were not met. Upon his election, mayor Rudy Giuliani famously embarked on a crusade against squeegee men as part of his quality-of-life campaign, claiming that their near-ubiquitous presence created an environment of disorder that encouraged more serious crime to flourish. Squeegee men disappeared from city streets during Giuliani's mayoralty and have yet to reappear in significant numbers. (In his book Leadership, Giuliani explained that his method of removing the squeegee men from the street involved arresting them. Patrolmen who first made the arrests saw that the squeegee men were released immediately, because according to the New York penal code at the time, cleaning someone's windshield was not illegal. Giuliani told the officers that if they saw any more squeegee men they should simply arrest them for jaywalking.)[7]