A Rockaway resident claims that no-parking signs that bar visitors from leaving their cars in the beach-front neighborhoods of Belle Harbor and Neponsit during summer weekends and holidays are "racist and illegal." The signs force beach-goers to drive west to pay parking lots in Jacob Riis Park, or east to look for street parking in areas that "have a higher percentage of lower-income and minority residents," according to the Times. But the signs themselves don't exist in city or state records.
John Baxter claims the signs were designed to keep non-Rockaway residents from visiting a stretch of public beach, and to put the burden of visitor parking on other neighborhoods. Baxter believes that well-connected Rockaway residents convinced the city to bypass the standard protocol and install the signs sometime in the 1950s—a claim bolstered by the fact that many of the signs don't appear in city or state Department of Transportation files. In fact, a judge overturned a parking ticket that Baxter received because "records verify that no such sign as stated appears at this location." According to Baxter, the ruling "supports what I've been saying all these years: The regulations are racist, and they were implemented illegally."
Many locals, like Community Board District Manager Jonathan Gaska, disagree. "It's a silly statement, because anyone can get on the city bus and get off anywhere in those neighborhoods anyway," said Gaska, who claims the signs were installed to keep down-for-the-day visitors—called D.F.D.s by full-time Rockaway residents—from from overrunning the neighborhood. "It was done to maintain quality of life ... Folks would come to visit the beach and just park anywhere. They'd toss their trash, empty their coolers, urinate on people's lawns. They'd block driveways and hope they wouldn't get ticketed. This is why the signs were put in." Other supporters of the signs reportedly said they help keep away the "mainland thugs that plague areas like Manhattan Beach."
