Many New Yorkers have become fed up with the city’s bland, traffic- clogging street fairs, and now they’ve got an ally in a high place: Mayor Bloomberg.
The mayor delivered a stinging critique last week of the never- ending street fairs that clog avenues and offer wares so com mon, they make K-Mart seem exciting.
“I think we have too many street fairs,” Bloomberg told a town-hall meeting on East 59th Street.
“Street fairs supposedly help communities by giving a lot of money. I don’t think you can ever find a dime that they ever got from them. They’re supposed to do unique things. They’re all the same.”
The topic came up when the mayor was explaining why Park Avenue was closed to motorists and opened to cyclists and pedestrians on three Saturdays, as opposed to Sundays, in August.
“On Sundays, we have a lot of street fairs,” he observed.
Bloomberg is obviously in a position to do something about the gripes he shares with the growing number of New Yorkers who’ve gotten all the tube socks, funnel cakes and other street-fest fare they could possibly use.
But the mayor said that he can “only fight so many battles” and that fixing the school system took precedence over the outcry sure to follow any attempt to curtail street fairs.
The city collects 20 percent of vendors’ fees for street festivals that occupy more than a block. Last year, that came to $1.6 million.
Officials said 331 street fairs are scheduled this year, down from 357 in 2007 and 369 in 2006.