When Rudy Giuliani took office as mayor of New York City in 1994, one of the first steps he took to reverse the city’s decline was to crack down on “squeegee men.” A sign of the level of public disorder that had become the norm in the Big Apple, the squeegee men would come up to cars idling in traffic, splash soap over their windshields, begin “cleaning” them, and then demand payment for their services. After a long absence, the squeegee men returned to NYC in 2020 and resumed their low-level assault on public order. In their small way, they help signify the return of urban decay in modern American life.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the squeegee men have popped up in D.C. as well (on New York Avenue NE, no less). The nation’s capital has seen a surge in crime, especially since 2020, with carjackings becoming surprisingly common. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that, when a man sidled up to my vehicle yesterday, he did not intend to steal but merely to squeegee it.
He started with the soap, of course. My reaction was quick once I figured out what was going on; I rolled down my window and demanded he stop. This precipitated a surprisingly long (thanks to the infinitely unchanging light) but pointless argument in which I exhorted him to go to another vehicle, and he asserted his apparent right to wash my car since this is a “free country.” I tried instead to engage him in small talk (I am not inclined to reduce fellow human beings to mere nuisances), but he was having none of it. He also objected to my own right to determine who gets to wash my car. He eventually gave up trying to squeegee my vehicle but, out of spite, refused to wash the soap off it, which I accepted as the price for being left alone. Our little tiff went unresolved until the light finally turned to green and I drove off. (It only occurred to me after the fact that I could have thwarted him much more easily by turning on my windshield wipers, something I’ll keep in mind for next time.)
It’s a small thing, but the decline of cities is made up as much of small disruptions to basic decency as it is of more dramatic events. For now, I will be avoiding New York Avenue, as I lack the confidence in this city’s government — which recently had to be stopped from being more lenient on criminals by Joe Biden — to do much about the problem. Urban decay is not inevitable and can be reversed; Giuliani, among others, showed that. But it is a matter of political will, and that seems to be in much shorter supply in D.C. than are squeegees.