New Yorkers share thoughts on alternate side parking 'shame stickers'

Elizabeth Shwe

James Ramsay

and

Dana Binfet

Published Aug 27, 2026

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Producer Elizabeth Shwe pictured holding a WNYC mic next to an alternate side parking shame sticker.

Dana Binfet / staff

Elizabeth Shwe

James Ramsay

and

Dana Binfet

Published Aug 27, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

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This column originally appeared in the Looped In NYC newsletter. Sign up here.

If you fail to move your car for alternate side parking in New York City — and get caught — the main penalty is a $65 ticket.

But for many car owners, $65 can feel like a bargain. After all, the five boroughs are home to some of the most valuable curb space in America.

Enter the “shame sticker”: a shield the Department of Sanitation has started slapping on cars violating alternate side parking rules that reads, “This vehicle violated street cleaning rules. As a result, this street could not be properly cleaned.”

The City Council passed a law earlier this year that allowed sanitation agents to start issuing the stickers. They started deploying the stickers earlier this month. But will the measure actually make a difference? Last week, my colleague Elizabeth Shwe hit the streets to find out.

James: First of all, our colleague Brittany Kriegstein reported that when the sanitation department used similar stickers from the late 1980s until 2012, people said they took days to remove and permanently damaged their cars. Are these new stickers any easier to peel off?

Elizabeth: They’re still pretty sticky! Meslin Paulino of Dyker Heights told me she recently saw somebody struggling to take a sticker off their car, but gave up halfway, leaving behind a smudge of white residue. She said she’d start yelling if she saw a sticker on her window and now plans to move her car an hour early to avoid one.

The very bottom of each sticker includes a note that says: “Remove this sticker with warm water and a scraper. Do not litter.” I ran into sanitation supervisor George Jensen, who was putting some of the stickers on cars in Dyker Heights while I was out. He assumes they’re not easy to get off.

James: Is it possible to drive with the sticker on, and wear it like a perverse badge of honor? Or would it block your view and cause you to crash?

Elizabeth: Since they put the sticker in the back window of the drivers side, it doesn’t obstruct the driver’s view. So technically, you can drive with the sticker on and wear it like a scarlet letter if you really wanted to.

James: Do you have any information on where these are being given out? Are certain neighborhoods or blocks that are especially shameful?

Elizabeth: The sanitation department told me Flatbush and Midwood were hit with 247 stickers during the first two weeks of August, more than any other area in the city. Astoria came in second with 212 stickers over that period. The third most-stickered area was Kensington and Borough Park, with 162.

James: Tell me about what you saw in your reporting on this. Where’d you go, who was getting stickered and did you witness any confrontations?

Elizabeth: We went to Dyker Heights early in the morning and saw sanitation supervisor Jensen giving out tickets and putting stickers on a block where five people declined to move their cars for street sweeping. There was one especially bad car that he stickered, which he said hadn’t moved since the winter. It was covered in parking tickets and surrounded by garbage. Jensen said he’s had an eye on that car for a while, ticketing it whenever he’s in the neighborhood. He said he reported the car to DSNY’s Derelict Vehicles Operations unit.

While we didn’t witness any confrontations, Nick Pesce of Dyker Heights told me the stickers cross a line because they vandalize private property. He said it's “just a fight waiting to happen.”

“If I witness somebody putting a sticker on my back, we’re fighting, we’re arguing, and I'm sure the people who put the labels on know it, so they’re watching over their back,” Pesce added.

Jensen told me he hasn’t had aggressive confrontations with drivers yet. Still, he said he gets a little nervous while putting them on.

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