@nycsanitation Full ASP is back today! Please move your car so we can keep streets clean, safe & healthy. Link in bio. Thanks #sarahmclachan for the inspo💚 #dsny #fyp
NYC Sanitation Dept. posts cringey PSA about alternate side parking
The New York City Department of Sanitation is being trash-talked over a cringey PSA about alternate side parking.
To commemorate the return of two-day-a-week ASP, the agency posted a moody clip to TikTok of its workers feigning tears and pleading with drivers not to leave their cars in the path of its street-sweepers.
“Will you move your car?” Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch says dramatically from the front seat of a garbage truck in the black and white video.
“Every day, litter gets on the streets of our city and it’s crying out to be cleaned up. A single mechanical broom sucks 1500 pounds of street litter off of New York City streets. But they don’t work if you don’t move your car for alternate side parking,” she continues.
The TikTok emulates the iconic Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial from 2007 — the singer’s “Angel” plays in the background of the melancholic clip as the sanitation workers longingly ask drivers to “please” move their cars.
The video even ends with a plea to “consider supporting your local animal rescue organization.”
While some viewers appreciated the throwback, many New Yorkers took the opportunity to trash the Sanitation Department and the reinstatement of the frustrating policy, which was paused at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
“I moved my car today but y’all didn’t come 😢. I need YOU to do your part,” one driver commented.
“It’s all about making money from tickets!! Don’t let them fool you,” another fumed.
Vice’s senior social editor Annalise Domenighini shared the video on Twitter, writing that she was “sick” over the video.
“i have a great team but yeah and i’m sick over it too,” the department’s assistant commissioner for public affairs, Joshua Goodman, quipped back.
Other viewers pointed out that Tisch should have urged New Yorkers to throw their trash in garbage bins rather than allowing it to accumulate in the street in the first place.
Meanwhile, as of July 6, over 2,500 city-dwellers signed an online petition to reverse the reinstated ASP policy.
Last month, Tisch announced that an estimated 50 percent of drivers don’t move their cars for ASP.
“I’m not moving my s–t just so a little box truck can swoop by and kick all that shit at pedestrians and cars parked on the other side instead,” a Twitter user wrote. “sorry fam, y’all just gonna have to understand.”
