Alexander Rea

“What’s wrong with street meat?”Alexander asks most people when they see the classic styrofoam flip-top container and look at him with disgust.

Is it a NYC thing?  I’ve heard that many other countries have food on the street and some of them have questionable sanitary conditions.  These days you have the truck phenomenon craze from here to LA (Mud Coffee, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, Wafels & Dinges, and the Dessert Truck are this author’s favorites).  Does food coming from a really slick truck with a Twitter feed improve the quality?  What’s wrong with the cart on the street?  When I was working at Radar Magazine (the second incarnation when it was next door to Home Depot on 23rd Street before Mort Zuckerman pulled the plug) I  would eat at the cart right outside almost daily. “Lamb, veggies and a little white sauce”.  It’s still there.  Now answer me this. Would a cart serving bad food still be at the same location for at least four years?

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I’m a fan of street-meat and the entire culture that has built up around street ready and available eats.  I have seen carts over the years that have lines of loyal customers blocks long.  Complete with ropes and stanchions.  When carts have to close down the news sometimes makes it to a NY1 segment.  There are even The Vendy Awards (aka The Vendy’s), an annual intense cook-off between the best sidewalks chefs in New York City for the Vendy Award trophy and the title of Vendy Award winner. A fundraiser to support the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides a voice for the thousands of people who sell food and merchandise on the streets of our city.  The finalists are determined by a public nomination process and the “Citizen Judges” are chosen by a lottery of ticket holder’s prior to June 1st. This year The Vendy’s will take place on September 26th at the Queens Museum of Art.  Tickets and more details at their website. Follow on Twitter (@vendyawards) and Facebook.

This week there was an article in Slate that caught my attention that also cited an article from last month in the New York Times.  They both touch the under-policed cut-throat world of the street vendors and their society.  My detractors would cite these articles to argue their anti-street-vendor rhetoric but I am steadfast.

First, in Julia Moskin’s July 30th New York Times article “Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart” she writes about a couple setting up their cart in front of The Museum of Modern Art:

Elwood Smith for New York Times (click to go to NYT article)

In four weeks of business, the couple has been threatened at the depot where they park the truck; cursed by a gyro vendor who said that he would set their truck on fire; told to stay off every corner in Midtown by ice cream truck drivers; and approached by countless others with advice — both friendly and menacing — on how to get along on the streets…

…Turf wars are nothing new for carts selling kebabs and cheap coffee. But the makers of thumbprint cookies, chicken-Thai basil dumplings, and crème anglaise are not happy about the sharp elbows that are part of the city’s sidewalk economy, or the murky bureaucracy that oversees the issuing of permits. (Six people were arrested on Tuesday on fraud charges related to food vending permits.

And she highlights the new comers:

In the last two years, upscale food trucks have swarmed the streets, entrancing New Yorkers with everything from artisanal Earl Grey ice cream to vegan tacos. These highly visible trucks, their outspoken owners and their followers on Twitter, Facebook and food blogs, have broken the code of the streets that has long kept a relative peace among food vendors…

…These new culinary entrepreneurs, most of them with English as their first language and little fear of police or immigration authorities, say that they are on a mission to bring better street food to New Yorkers, and ready to bring dark corners of the business to light…

…The established vendors, on the other hand, see newcomers as competitors with an unfair advantage in a desperate economy. “They think they can come in with their big fancy truck and push into a spot where I’ve been for 18 years,” said Norman Sweeney, the jewelry vendor who tried to block the Street Sweets truck Monday. He said that the strain of holding down two jobs and sleeping in his truck had caused him to “snap.” “This spot is all I have left,” he said…

Second, this week in Meredith Simons August 12th Slate article “The Half-Million-Dollar Wiener” she delves into the business side:

A hot dog vendor was kicked from the curb outside New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last week for failure to pay his monthly rent—of $53,558. Pasang Sherpa was under contract to pay the Parks Department $362,201 a year for a stand on the south side of the Met’s entrance and $280,500 for another on the north side. That’s a lot of hot dogs. With rent astronomically high, how much do New York City hot dog vendors actually make?

It’s hard to say. Neither the Parks Department nor the Health Department (which oversees food sales outside parks) requires vendors to report income. They don’t bother calculating expected sales, either—in part because rent is set at auction (with vendors battling it out) rather than by the city. What we do know is that even though Sherpa, a rookie, got in over his head, vendors have long been willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to push $2 dogs outside the Met. (The museum attracts 5 million visitors a year, and the hot dog stands are the only food outlets for blocks.) Last year’s occupant paid $415,000 a year for the Met stands plus at least $25,000 for supplies and labor, and didn’t go under—so we can assume he brought in significantly more than $440,000.

And further into more of the cut-throat side that ties in nicely with a link to the above NYT article:

Vendors on city streets (as opposed to outside park areas) don’t have to pay rent for specific spots; their only real estate expense is the cart permit the city requires them to buy. Theoretically, that’ll put you back just $200 a year. But since the city caps the number of food vendor permits at 3,100, far below demand, there’s an extensive black market. Some companies buy up the permits for dozens of carts and then lease them to individual vendors at highly inflated prices…

…Unlike the Parks Department, the city doesn’t regulate where vendors can set up shop, as long as they’re on streets where vending is allowed. The vendors largely police themselves. New salespeople who encroach on an established colleague’s territory will often get a verbal warning within 15 minutes of showing up at a new site. If the new guy doesn’t take off, anything can happen. The police may be called, the new vendor may be physically threatened, or he may just find his tires slashed.

Hot dog cart on a busy street in Austin during SXSW 2009

Both are great articles and reminded me of my devotion to the carts of the street and how some of the closest people in my life simply do not want to partake. One thing I have noticed of my detractors is that most of them are not from the city originally.  Is it a local thing?  Do they believe that because the cart is on the street that it can’t be as “good” or “healthy” as say the corner bodega?  The quality of meat products is most likely the same.  It can’t be because of cleanliness.  There have been many books published about dirty restaurant secrets and I’ve spent time first-hand in very “nice” restaurants and have seen things that would shut-down any street-cart in a New York minute.  I look forward to the comments I’ll hopefully receive on this article.

Beelzebun's Gourmet Street Food cart during SXSW 2009

I’ll admit to not being the most worldly traveled.  I have been accused of and will admit to being a provincial New Yorker.  I enjoy studying people in this city and their history.  And wherever I do travel I try to take it the local sounds and flavors.  I was in Austin TX for a week last March for the SXSW 2009 Interactive conference.  The festival draws thousands from around the world for not only the interactive but also the film and of course the famous music portion.  The main drags were lined with various street-eats like the two gems I have photos of here, a flashy hot dog cart and Beelzebun’s Gourmet Street Food.  The hot dog cart like anyone from NYC but Beelzebun’s was a real class act offering all-beef jumbo dogs, pulled pork,  hotlinks and spicy andouille sausage.  The locals and travelers seemed to have no problem partaking.

**UPDATE: Saturday, April 22 2009**

Look closely. There is a someone that looks like a Vet in the cart. Ashley Gilbertson for New York Times (click to go to NYT article)

Today in Simon Akims New York Times article “A Prominent Collection at the Met: Food Carts” he gets into trick of the trade.  (Note about the date.  Online it says that the article was published yesterday but I found it actually in the print version today.  The print version is fabulous to have on the weekends. You should get a subscription.  But that’s another post/rant/POV that I have to write.)

Outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a hot-spot for cart vendors, there is an increasing and alarming amount of carts setting up camp.  To the point where visitors to the museum (the main attraction after all) have to weave through the mobile land grabbers.  Now these mostly newcomers are claiming that they do not have to pay the city because their permits are owned by disabled Veterans.  Simon goes on to say:

The city once earned more than half a million dollars a year in vending rights from two hot dog carts in front of the museum. Then, two years ago, a third vendor, Dan Rossi, nosed his cart onto the property, saying that as a disabled veteran, he had the right to be there without paying the city a dime…

…Police officers handed out summonses last week, in most cases for being too far from the curb. Vendors said they were in a catch-22 situation: If they were near the curb they would be ticketed for obstructing the bus and taxi stops, and if they were farther out on the sidewalk they would be ticketed for being too far from the curb…

And he begins about the disabled Veteran angle:

Harold Dalton, who served in the Army from 1979 to 1983, holds the permit for Veterans Halal Food. “I found a guy that wanted to cooperate,” he said. “I hop up there every now and then, sling a frank or two.” (While pork is forbidden in Islamic tradition, and thus is not halal, these hot dogs are beef.)

It is a great article. Head over to the NYT and read it today.  And if you are near the Met.  Go buy a hot dog from one of the original vendors.

Here in DC the crew is fast underway on building out the inauguration structure in front of the Capital. With about one month and counting until one of the best celenrations this natiom has seen on my generation. Yes they can.