On the day before Thanksgiving, trailers full of Christmas trees rolled into the Upper West Side. They dropped off trees at the various stands now sprouting throughout the neighborhood. On their way, the Christmas tree guys got to see the neighborhood from a pretty cool vantage point: laying down on top of hundreds of trees.
Thanks to Jessica for taking the shot above on 80th and Broadway, where she says she’s been seeing at least eight trucks a night. Click the photo to enlarge it.
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can anyone describe, in a nutshell, how the tree business works here, in the city?
all the trees come in on a few trailers, yet there are many retailers.
it seems to me that location and the length of a tree standare critical and must be coveted.
how are licenses obtained? how is electrical safety maintained? the sellers seem to live at their locations—how does that work with the city?
do they make enough profit in a season to last them a year?
Here is a WSJ article on selling trees in NYC:
https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324461604578193260364882572?mod=WSJ_NY_MIDDLETopStories&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324461604578193260364882572.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_NY_MIDDLETopStories
“Under a city administrative code often referred to as the “conifer clause,” tree stand operators may display and sell coniferous trees on city sidewalks without a permit in December. The sellers are required only to secure the permission of owners whose properties front the sidewalk where they put their shop and maintain a pedestrian path.”
So under he conifer clause, anyone who was selling trees in November should have been ticketed or arrested. Too bad I left town for the weekend…
There’s one on my block, which is a side street. They take up a third of the block, have a loud, smelly generator, and make it hard to cross the street anywhere but the corner (a God-given right in NYC). They are against the side of a Broadway facing store, so I assume they paid off that store, and so I doubt they will leave. I have no problem with festive tree sellers, I just wish they would take it to an avenue. Little side streets are not the place for a month of noise, pollution, and congestion.