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New York police officers are cracking down on food vendors, many of whom are disabled veterans, ticketing them for parking their carts in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  While the laws regarding who can park where are somewhat complicated, there must be some way to allow the vendors to continue working, while also maintaining an orderly system that operates legally.

For a while the city sold vending rights to two hot-dog stands outside the museum, but two years ago Dan Rossi, a disabled veteran, began operating a cart, explaining that a 19th century law entitles veterans to sell where others are not allowed.  But now that other veterans have followed suit, the city is arguing that there is only room for one cart and issued heavy fines because of the location of the carts, which are either too close to the museum or to the taxi and bus loading areas. 

I don’t know the details of the legal issues, but I’m guessing there’s some way to accommodate the vendors as the city did with vendors in Red Hook.  Obviously, we don’t want to see the sidewalk overflowing with carts, especially where safety is a concern, but there also aren’t many affordable food options around Madison Ave for visitors to the museum besides the carts.  The disabled veterans should be entitled to operate a cart as a way to generate much needed income, but perhaps there could be a system where a limited fee is payed to the city (except maybe in the strange and questionable cases where veterans seem to be kept around solely to circumvent the law).  Perhaps the city could set up a system similar to the hawker centers of Asia, which organize street food vendors in a centralized location and abide by sanitation and legal codes.

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