For many, a snowstorm is a time to batten down the hatches, stock up on food and hibernate until it's over. But apparently some of those hibernators choose not to stock up — instead relying on app-based delivery workers to brave the storm for them.
Streetsblog reporters who were out and about on Sunday saw countless delivery workers biking on barely plowed streets and bike lanes. Los Deliveristas Unidos founder Gustavo Ajche took to X to implore delivery ordering New Yorkers to "please be generous" with tips.
By Sunday night, however, DoorDash and Grubhub had shut down their operations, promising to come back online on Monday morning (PIX 11).
In other delivery news, workers braving the snow and cold this week should at least have more money in their pockets after judges threw out lawsuits from DoorDash, UberEats and Instacart late on Friday.
In one case, a judge rejected the apps' bid to overturn the city's new mandatory up-front tipping rule, which goes into effect today. Moving the tipping option to after checkout led to more than $550 million lost in wages, the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection reported this month.
In a separate case, a judge threw out a bid from Instacart to stop a law, also going into effect on Monday, that requires grocery delivery companies to comply with the city's delivery worker minimum wage rules.
DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine said in a statement that the bad old days "are over."
"We look forward to enforcing Local Laws 107 and 108 to ensure that workers get paid, and consumers have the option to tip freely," he added.
In other storm news, Mayor Mamdani and Gov. Hochul had wisely advised New Yorkers to stay home during the storm. Those who had to or chose to navigate the city on Sunday faced significant subway delays and hindered access to buses, which also experienced delays and reroutes, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said.
The mayor, meanwhile, spent Sunday making his presence known as the snow piled up. Videos circulated on social showed Hizzoner shoveling drivers out of their parking spots à la Andrew Cuomo. Local political powerbroker Moshe Indig hilariously called the obvious photo op "not a photo op":
The city's Plow.nyc streets tracker showed frequent plowing throughout the day in most parts of the city, but plows failed to keep up for much of the day with the fast pace of the snowfall, as Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief Gersh Kuntzman saw on the 10th Avenue bike lane in Manhattan just before 3 p.m.
As the city clears the snow from the most vital parts of the road, sneckdowns will appear across the five boroughs. As we explained on Friday, big snowstorms tend to reveal huge swaths of public space that drivers simply don't use — they appear as piles of snow and show us all exactly where neckdowns could easily be built. Hence, "sneckdown."
Reporter Dave Colon asked the mayor if he knew what a sneckdown was at a press conference on Friday. (The mayor didn't, so we told him.) As the snow clears and you come across sneckdowns this week, take photos, send them to tips@streetsblog.org or post them online and tag Streetsblog and the mayor.
In other news:
- At least seven New Yorkers died due to the cold weather over the weekend. (NY Times, Gothamist)
- A company claims it could bring 150 mph flying cars to New York City within as little as two years. (NY Post)
- There was a pre-storm run on weed. (NY Post)
- An off-duty NYPD sergeant driving the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway struck another vehicle and killed its passenger, a Manhattan doorman. (NY Times)
- The MTA uses its vintage "Redbird" trains to prep subway tracks for snow. (The City)
- Eric Adams's one-time chief of staff Frank Carone is under federal investigation — and it involves car insurance fraud (which, now that you mention it, has become Gov. Hochul's recent obsession. Hmm...). (NY Times)
- Richmond Hill neighbors are petitioning Mayor Mamdani to get cars off Freedom Drive. (QNS)
- An ICE agent told a legal observer that the agency is using license plates to keep a database of everyone who films them. “We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist,” the agent reportedly said. (KenKlippenstein.com)
- The West Side Rag waxes poetic about walking in the Big Apple.
- And, in case you've lost count, the Mamdani-O-Meter has hit a new high: Sunday was the 11th day in a row that the new mayor has lived up to his promises:
