I Don’t Care If You’re Zeppole, You’re In My Goddamn Way!

Community Board 2, reacting to years of uniformly lame street fairs in Lower Manhattan especially, will institute a new permitting process that will hopefully discourage the vendor cabal responsible for heartburn across the city:

Citing a proliferation of fairs managed by professional promoters, Community Board 2 in Manhattan passed a resolution making those seeking to put on street fairs subject to public hearings.

According to the mayor’s office, the community board, which covers Greenwich Village, Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and Hudson Square, hosts the highest number of street fairs of any community board in the city. Last year, 52 of the city’s 357 street fairs were held in the neighborhoods.

The board is also creating a subcommittee to oversee the permit application process. This marks a change from the past procedure, whereby the district manager of the board would simply work out the schedule with individual street fair applicants.