The Dig-Out King of New York City

"Drivers who failed to dig out while the snow from our late-January storm was still soft are now contending with thick walls of ice cocooning their vehicles. And while there's something almost sculptural about the mounds that have formed around these frozen cars, something has to give eventually. Unless people are willing to surrender their Subarus to the earth, they will have to dig out. Or pay someone else to. For the determined, liberating people's cars from the ice can mean a quick source of income."

"How did you become a dig-out guy? My background is in user experience design. The downturn of the tech industry over the past 12 months and trying to get a job has been pretty crazy, so I had actually gone down to sign up for emergency snow removal with the Department of Sanitation back in December. My name was on the list and I was ready to go out and shovel some snow, but they weren't calling."

"So I was like, I guess I gotta take this into my own hands. Then I saw somebody put a post up on Reddit last week offering a snow-shoveling type gig. I think it was a couple of neighborhood kids hustling. I was like, I think I could probably do that a little bit better. I figured I could make a couple bucks. So I went to make my own poster and put it on the Greenpoint and Williamsburg sub-Reddit."

Late-January snow left many cars encased in thick ice walls, forcing owners to either dig out vehicles or pay for help. Digging out cars has become an ad-hoc income source for people willing to offer the service. Danny, an unemployed user-experience designer in Greenpoint, began offering snow removal and car dig-outs, charging a minimum of $119 per dig depending on how deeply vehicles were buried. He had signed up for emergency snow removal with the Department of Sanitation but received no call, so he posted ads on neighborhood subreddits. Initial requests involved buildings and sidewalks; after plows cleared streets, demand shifted strongly to car dig-outs.

Read at Curbed