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If you feel like you're being inundated with menus, fliers and other messages on pieces of paper that wind up in your building lobby or under your front door, you'll be relieved to hear that the people dropping those fliers off will be fined between $250-1000 per violation. A state law went into effect yesterday that prohibits the flier-ing of buildings that specifically say they don't want fliers.
Assemblyman Mark Weprin made a good point to amNY about why it's not just about fliers becoming litter, "You leave your house for three days, you come home and there's 11 fliers on your lawn. Then people know nobody's home." The city won't enforce the law until the fall, because it still needs to make adjustments for multi-family buildings. Apparently some buildings can post signs saying how many menus they want, in case some tenants do want menus! That's probably small comfort to the businesses who do plaster neighborhoods with their menus.
Do you feel you've got too many menus littering your home? Back in April, City Council member Simcha Felder introduced city legislation to ban menus, fliers, circulars, etc. from being distributed; he had been spurred into acting because his mom was fined $100 by the Department of Sanitation for have fliers on her stoop! Naturally, Felder supports the state law.
And we were inspired by a man's quest to collect all the menus in the city.
Photograph by andreazee on Filckr
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It's about time! I will be petitionuing my building to ban menus. I hope this saves some trees as well!
It's about god-damned time they did this. DSNY fines people for litter on their front steps when really they should have been fining these businesses that are basically illegally dumping en masse right on our front doors, creating much of the litter on the streets when this trash isn't picked up every day or blows away before anyone gets a chance to remove it.
An outright ban would have been better, but this is a nice start.
Fine them all and let god sort them out.
Assemblyman Mark Weprin, "... Then people know nobody's home."
No...then people know you're too lazy to pick up all the shit.
The environmental impact due to reduced paper use is dwarfed by the waste created by millions of plastic take out containers.
#4=idiot
can we see some statistics on that one?
My guess is that the sign is not going to work.
I see a few problems.
1. The person who is placing the fliers/menus may not see the sign.
2. Many of the people who place the menus may lack the English skills to understand it.
3. The person who is placing the fliers/menus may just ignore the sign.
4. Someone is going to claim that someone placed the flyers/menus for their business there with out their permission to get them in trouble.
What is needed is some sort of state or city issued sign or sticker that property owners can place on the door in a standard place using some sort of image, say a menu in a red slash circle, that is easily recognized and understood. That would deal with problems 1 and 2.
For restaurants, they could most likely get some sort of website with their menu on it up for the cost of a menu print run or could get into some sort of partnership with an existing menu website.
There isn't really need for paper menus anymore.
Nothing is more annoying than being away for days and then returning to find a pile of fliers stacked up by your apartment door. And, yes, those fliers do let everyone know that no one's at home which must be great for burglars.
And I have a word of advice for those restaurants littering my building with their fliers: if your food was any good in the first place, you wouldn't have to be littering the building with fliers to get business. It seems like it is primarily the not-so-good restaurants that need to distribute fliers.
Is the actual person distributing the flyer going to be responsible for paying the fine, or the restaurant/store/whatever? An old boss made me hand those things out, and I hated myself for doing it.
Okay, cool... At first, I thought that said "fines for disturbing the flyers." Whew.
Too bad this law won't hold up. Little thing called the First Amendment in the way. It's not an accident this hasn't done before -- its a very tricky thing to regulate the distribution of flyers without creating an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Not clear if they've even tried to draft around that issue or if this is just yet another cheap/ill-informed political stunt. Any fines being given out for cell phone use in movie theatres lately?
urgh I hate that "little thing called [really big, important thing]" usage. It really makes me shudder in annoyance.
Anyway... restaurants' "free speech" is not being denied. They are free to print as many menus as they choose and give them to whoever wants them, or display them on their own property, or even sell them if they can.
They just can't put them in my hallway if I ask them not to.
Come on.
#10, you're an idiot... this law is no different than "no solicitation" signs. commercial speech (which a restaurant menu barely qualifies as) is given very little protection under the first amendment. now, if the state had just BANNED all flyers or banned distributing pamphlets on a street corner, that would be a problem. but i see nothing wrong (or unconstitutional) about permitting homeowners to decide whether or not they will accept such menus/flyers/etc.
"Free speech issue"? WTF you talking about? How is a company printing up advertisements for their business and placing it on PRIVATE property covered under the First Amendment?
I'll support a ban. I live in Forest Hills in an attached house. Out there it's not so much the menus but the packets of advertising flyers from grocery stores and the like. They are horribly big and quickly turn a lawn into a garbage dump. What a waste: they drop it on the lawn, and I pick it up and put it directly into the recyling bin.
Finally! I'm tired of tripping on menus tossed on my apartment building stairs everyday.. all they do is make a mess...
I don't mind fliers on my gate, but when I get a flier on my front door I get pissed off cause the guy had to open my get get onto my property walk up the steps and was in the sanctity of my doorstep. that shit pisses me off. I don't even look at the fliers. They are always moldy and damp and dirty. One time I tried to put fliers all over my gate so the fliers guy would see that there was no room for fliers but they actually took my old fliers away and put new ones there. CRAZY!!!
i'm gonna make a sign. How do you say "no fliers" in spanish and chinese? I'm gonna say if you put a flier at my door If I see you I'm gonna punch you in your dick
#5 = jackass
Do you really need a study to tell you that plastic is more environmentally unfriendly than paper?
One is made from a renewable source and one isn't.
One will biodegrade and one won't.
One weighs about 100 times the other one.
5,18, etc...
the fliers and circulars from drugstores, grocery stores, bed bath and beyond, kohls, circuit city, best buy, and god knows where else, which pollute the front step of every house in the outer boroughs are universally wrapped in plastic.
All I can say is good riddance! It does make my blood boil when I find these menus on my doormat or worse, already under my door.