Souvenir sellers have flooded the Brooklyn Bridge. Now the city is banning them
New York City will ban vendors from the Brooklyn Bridge starting Wednesday
NEW YORK — Visitors to New York City hoping to take home a souvenir from the Brooklyn Bridge will now have to settle for a photograph, as vendors are about to be banned from the iconic span.
The new rule, which goes into effect Wednesday, aims to ease overcrowding on the bridge’s heavily trafficked pedestrian walkway, where dozens of trinket sellers currently compete for space with tourists and city commuters.
As crowds flocked to the bridge over the holiday season, the situation turned dangerous, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He pointed to videos that showed pedestrians leaping from the elevated walkway onto a bike lane several feet below in order to bypass a human traffic jam.
“It’s not only a sanitary issue, it’s a public safety issue,” Adams said on Tuesday. “People would’ve trampled over each other. We need order in this city. That is one of our major landmarks.”
The new rules will apply to all of the city's bridges — though none have close to as many vendors as the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge, which is often lined with tables offering phone cases, knock-off Yankees caps, novelty license plates and more.
Those who sell items on the bridge acknowledge that vendors have proliferated in recent years, driven by relaxed enforcement during the coronavirus pandemic and the availability of low-priced merchandise. A decision two years ago to relocate cyclists to a lane of the roadway also freed up space for stalls.
In the middle span of the bridge, entrepreneurs have now set up nearly a dozen rotating selfie platforms where tourists can pay to take panoramic photos.
MD Rahman, who has sold hot dogs and pretzels out of a cart on the
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