We're big on the taco trucks here at Slashfood. We've blogged about them again and again, so it's appalling to hear that Los Angeles lawmakers made it a misdemeanor crime to stay parked in one spot for longer than one hour. Truck owners can be punished with a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail.
The main reason the law was passed? Local business owners were complaining that vendors - like the taco trucks - were taking away the business of the their brick-and-mortar restaurants. The restaurateurs were also peeved because they are forced to pay more bills than the vendors do, so the competition is "unfair."
The part that really kills me, though, is that the president of the local Merchant's Association was quoted as saying, "I don't want to put anybody out of business, but it's the fairness of it all...It's a big victory for the merchants, and it's going to clean up the area."
Wow, really? Clean up the area? This term is used way too often as a nice, safe way of expressing racist, classist views, and trying to gentrify areas like East L.A. And of course they're going to put these people out of business. For many of the truck owners, this is their livelihood, and it's how they support their families - just like the brick-and-mortar store owners.
Truck drivers are threatening to ignore the law. Are you as enraged as they are? Then sign the Save Our Taco Trucks petition, read about the campaign, and then on May 1st, patronize your local food truck vendors to show your support.
Remind everyone that street vendors are part of the East L.A. culture, and deserve to exist just as much as the restaurateurs do! (And for a decent, albeit fictional, depiction of a food vendor and his day-to-day existence, check out Man Push Cart).
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