City officials Tuesday began slapping giant neon-green “shame stickers” on the cars of drivers who failed to follow alternate-side-parking rules.
The quirky crackdown, featuring 8.5 x 11-inch adhesives, was resurrected in the city by Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who sponsored a bill that repealed a decade-long bill on the practice and allows street sweepers to again stick it to scofflaws.
“There’s just not enough cops,” Brewer said of enforcing the parking rule.
New York City has again started placing giant, neon-green “shame stickers” on cars running afoul of parking rules. Spectrum News NY1
The stickers are being distributed by the city Department of Sanitation.
“So I’m hoping that, you know, the sticker thing will resonate with people and say, ‘You gotta move your car, ” the pol said. “I don’t know what else to do,”
Video posted to social media showed Brewer gleefully anointing the first unlucky vehicles with stickers on the Upper West Side’s 90th Street – which she claimed was about halfway lined with cars parked illegally.
“This vehicle violates NYC parking regulations, as a result, this street could not be properly cleaned,” the stickers state, according to the clip posted by a New York Times reporter.
Brewer’s bill passed earlier this summer in a 41-10 vote.
The New York City Council banned these parking stickers of shame in 2012 and Gale Brewer sponsored a bill to bring them back.
Lots of drivers on this block on the Upper West Side didn’t move their cars this morning and will return to a ticket and a bright green sticker. pic.twitter.com/WwXRpoG2eu
— Emma G. Fitzsimmons (@emmagf) August 4, 2026
Mayor Zohran Mamdani allowed the legislation, Intro-92, to go into effect after 30 days, declining to sign or veto it.
But some New Yorkers and lawmakers were peeved by the unsightly stickers.
“For 14 blissful years, these stickers were illegal in NYC because I banned them when I served in the (city council),” said former city Councilman David Greenfield in a post to X.
“Many of the drivers getting stickered were innocent and the glue wrecked their cars. A ticket is a penalty. Gluing trash to someone’s windshield is vandalism,” he said.
The fine print at the bottom of the sticker notes vehicle owners should use “warm water and a scraper” to remove the placard.
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Brewer said the new stickers are easier to remove than the old ones.
“According to the Sanitation Department , this one is easier to get off. It does need a remover and some water as I understand it, but it’s easier to get off,” she said, although she acknowledged she hadn’t tried to remove one herself.
During an unrelated press conference Tuesday, Mamdani said he “fully supported” the measure.
“It is critically important that the Sanitation Department be able to conduct street cleaning,” Hizzoner told reporters. “Whenever I meet the hardworking members of DSNY, the question is always how we can make their jobs easier. If this measure accomplishes that, I fully support it.”
The practice was banned by the council in 2011 after complaints that the adhesive used on the stickers was too difficult to take off and sometimes damaged windows.