Seriously, a street fair in (let's say) Japantown where nobody on the street will hand me a bowl of noodles? How is this even possible?
I sense the invisible hand of a monopoly.
Deliver me from the Chicken Skewer
I do not understand, in this town which is obsessed with food; and with precious little gourmet food carts; and with street fairs; why the food at every street fair is exactly the same disgusting meat-on-a-stick bullshit.
Tags: firstperson, sf
32 Responses:
I smell laws regulating street food that probably drive a monopoly.
"Cut Me Own Throat" Dibbler buys his Rat-onna-stick from FoodCorp Global Deep Freeze, thus moving the litigation target elsewhere.
In NYC at least, it's exactly what you suspect: there's a cap on the number of permits for temporarily erected food vendors, and various mafiosos own all of them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's the same deal here, especially given the effort that the city occasionally puts into chasing off DIY vendors.
I always wondered about that. Good to have my suspicions confirmed.
I still love funnel cake from the crappy street fair food stands, though
mmmh... Funnel Cake...
You still go to the street fairs? You deserve the crappy food, long lines, and obnoxious crowds. As one of my leading misanthropic friends, I'm shocked you'd even consider going - let alone actually do it.
On the upside, if you see a necklace or something you like at one of those things, you can always just pick it up at the next one because the vendors are all the same, too.
My excuse is, there were bands, and they were good.
OK - now THAT'S new. A good band at one of these things? I thought there had to be a law against that.
If you had come to the roadworks street fair, we had taiko drumming.
Also tacos.
no noodles though.
Heh.. maybe it's because I've only gone to street fairs in towns with populations under 30K, but that hasn't been my experience at all.
Who am I kidding? That's exactly why. :)
This is one of the few times I will say this: hooray for Los Angeles! We have food trucks here- so many that the brick-and-mortar restaraunts are feeling threatened. Downtown LA Artwalk (another thing that totally rules about LA that makes me go "why doesn't SF do this?") had like fifteen food trucks last time, featuring every cuisine from Korean/Mexican fusion to South Indian street food to a million of the "gourmet comfort-food-of-the-moment" things.
In general (and this might make John unfriend me, like, for realz), but I think the food scene in LA is way better than the SF food scene.
especially chrome airstream trail trailers, with farm to market folks who have wonderfully complex menues, or oddball narrowly focused offerings.
If jwz makes it to SxSW, hopefully our city council feebs won't have figured out how to shut them all down.
Having been to SXSW twice, all I remember of your street vendors is pizza, pizza, meatonnastick, and pizza.
There was also a cupcake truck.
The non-pizza street vendors tend to be outside the main SXSW territory (i.e., Sixth and environs).
I, for one, look forward to a photo post titled "Fat Cock". It's a coffee wagon, of course.
it's really taken off to expand far beyond 6th street:
Around town, a random slew of names: Franklin Barbecue, Counter Culture, Odd Duck Farm To Trailer, Gourdough's, Cheer Up Charlie's, Sushi A-Go-Go, Chris' Little Chicago
Photos of various vendors' food: http://www.dishola.com/dish_sets/view/15
map updated in March: http://austinfoodcarts.com/austin-mobile-food-cart-trailer-map/
There are also little clusters that have been cropping up, like the herd of food trailers in the dirt parking lot (with picnic tables!) just south of Treadwell on South Lamar, across from Alamo Drafthouse's new schmancy bowling alley / dance club / bar: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A981580
There's at least halfassed efforts to organize vs politicians: http://austinfoodcarts.com/information-on-proposed-changes-to-city-code-for-mobile-food-vendors/
6th street, proper, still has crappy pizza handed to you out of a grated window. yuck.
LA has so many food trucks as a side-effect of catering to filming on location.
[captcha: palleic OOCYTES. Que?]
...kinda. We have breakfast wagons on location, and the food trucks do occasionally work shoots, but there's not as much of a crossover as you'd expect. Mostly the food trucks serve huge office buildings, or clusters of them, on Wilshire or in Beverly Hills. And also, of course, outside bars during late-night drunkfood service.
Food trucks are the new cupcake bakery; everyone has them. San Francisco has them; New York has them; someone just did a reality show with them; I'm sure there's someone out in Akron or Topeka or whatever that's surfing eBay motors right now, thinking about their future Cambodian/Ethiopian fusion taco empire.
Yes, but LA is particularly suited to food trucks. Geographically- because it's too decentralized for a food cart to travel the necessary territory. Logistically, because we have parking spaces and streets big enough for a full-size box truck. And economically, because there's a huge amount of medium- to high-income people wandering around who want your food and will pay for it...but even with all their cash, you still couldn't afford the real estate prices to open up a real restaurant. Really, the only things that SF has in common are the high real estate prices. It's a natural outgrowth of the city's layout and culture, just like street food vendors in Europe and Asia (and New York, if they'd let them.)
Sadly, this means that SF probably won't ever have a decent food-truck scene. Seriously, where would you park one?
So are you saying that this hypothetical Japantown street fair, yakitori is verboten?
I've had yakitori at the Cherry Blossom Festival - but then again, that's meat-on-a-stick.
Homer: "Oh, alright. Give me one bowl."
Khlav Kalash Guy: "No bowl. Stick, stick."
(PS: LiveJournal needs to die, the comment preview/post cycle is so confusing)
Depends on the street fairs. While many of the larger ones are the same ten agents of meatsticks, some aren't - and you shouldn't diss Japantown, as the Cherry Blossom Festival is one of the few times I see food that *is* yakitori and isn't the same ten vendors. That's because the Cherry Blossom Festival gives the food licenses to the local nonprofit organizations, who often make most of their yearly budget off selling me yakitori and beer. (Folsom gives some of the booze concession to nonprofits, IIRC, as does Pride.)
I'm assuming you were at Sunday Streets, which is pretty lame for vendors so far, and which was *not* put on with much help from any of the Japantown associations of which I am aware.
I've been meaning to check out Off the Grid food truck events (http://www.sfcartproject.com/blog ) but I'm lazy.
No, it was the "J-Pop Festival". They closed down the usual 3-4 blocks, but just had meatsticks.
Allow me to gloat. In Sydney, yes, there are meat on a stick vendors, but also, depending on the ethnicity of the festival, green mango salad, hot kim chee and beef, pad thai, pofferjes, churros, fish chowder, mousaka, pintxos, etc etc. I think the licensing laws are slacker so the people actually putting on the festival can sell their product.
I wish I could get meat on a stick!
Here in Toronto, the city bylaws only allow the selling of Hot Dogs and Sausages from carts. That's it.
There was some brief hope when they started a pilot project to have other types of food at carts, but it died under the weight of regulations and city council posturing.
I still don't see how council thought anyone could make a go of that program. Although, perhaps that was the point? I'm sure the hotdog mafia has the ear of council.
In case anyone wants a case study in how not to start a cart program: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/863050--why-toronto-s-street-food-program-is-in-shambles
Having just come back from the Bay Area (and, e.g, the amazing Eat Real Festival in Oakland) to Toronto, I say BOOOOOOOO.
Ever since 1982 I've know that when you're in a West Coast city in the 21st century, you can't get noodles, even if you shout "4 ! 2 , 2 , 4! With noodles!"
In New York street fairs also have the same kind of homogenous vendorage: greasy arepas, bad tacos, more arepas, corn on the cob, very bad "italian" sausage, funnel cakes, nightmarish gyros, etc. Even the plastic banners are printed from the same file. The twin rumors are that they are a) controlled by certain friendly fraternal organizations and b) the fees are so high, that only the highest possible margins will allow vendors to make any money.
I think kyron will disagree. She enjoyed her meat on a stick.
you couldn't have tried one of the million cupcake booths in the vicinity?