Mexican wrestling has its Rudos, the villainous luchadores who use dastardly tactics to win their matches. (Think of the old folding-chair routine when the referee isn’t looking.) In Los Angeles, we have the bureaucrats who hope to push through oppressive legislation without garnering attention who then plug their ears with their fingers when swamped with our collective outrage.
The County Board of Supervisors’ new ordinance that will effectively eliminate Taco Trucks in unincorporated Los Angeles County goes into effect at 12:00 AM on Thursday morning. Accordingly, we’re having a little get-together to celebrate this wheeled Angeleno culinary institution, while lamenting the myopic politicians who think they know what’s best for us. Meet us in East Los Angeles at Tacos El Galuzo at 5555 Whittier Blvd. between 8 PM and 12 AM. You’ll be supporting Juan Torres, a truck owner directly affected by the new law, and you’ll get to eat good cheap food while enjoying the company of like-minded people. Sr. Torres’ truck isn’t far from numerous other East LA mainstays, so plan an eastside odyssey and add us to your itinerary. Hurry, starting Thursday, purchasing a taco from one of these “peddlers” will be abetting a criminal!
Chris Rutherford & Aaron Sonderleiter
www.saveourtacotrucks.org
Posted by Cyrus Farivar at May 13, 2008, 2:28 pm Pacific Time
The good folks over at Current TV did a short minute long video on the taco truck contraversy in LA that’s been brewing down south. Nothing new here, but some great shots of LA taco trucks.
Los Angeles, loathe to rallying cohesively around a local cause, has joined hands around tortillas.
A new county ordinance restricting taco trucks has outraged food bloggers, construction workers, residents of East Los Angeles accustomed to plopping down in a folding chair, taco in one hand, non-alcoholic sangria in the other, as well as members of the taco-loving public willing to drive 15 miles for the best carnitas.
And then an obligatory choad quote at the end:
“A lot of these food trucks are not from our community, they make money in our community but do not give back to the community,” said Lourdes Caracoza, the president of Maravilla Business Association, which covers a small section of East Los Angeles. “People say this is part of our culture. I don’t recall any towns in Mexico having taco trucks.”
If there’s one thing you can say about culture, it’s that it’s unchangeable and the same everywhere.
The article also links to the “Carne Asada is Not a Crime” petition at saveourtacotrucks.org.
Posted by David Boyk at April 27, 2008, 9:24 am Pacific Time
Time gets on the bandwagon with a piece about LA County’s plan to kick taco trucks out. Apparently the purpose of government is to take sides in what County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the leader of the crackdown, admits is a “turf war.”
“There are so many other problems in this city. Gangs. Robberies. To focus on people trying to make a living selling tacos? It makes no sense,” says Olegario Hernandez, while gassing up his taco truck on East L.A.’s Whittier Blvd. Taco truck drivers say it takes time to set up and prepare the food, and that moving constantly would make doing business impossible.
The best thing I had to eat last week was a massive carnitas huarache, from the Gorditas Lupita’s truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard near Avenue 34. I ate it while leaning against a warehouse wall in Glassell Park, washed it down with a bottle of Mexican Coke and perfumed with the exhaust of a thousand diesel trucks. The second-best thing may have been a Puebla-style cemita overstuffed with fried beef milanesa, ripe avocado and shreds of the Pueblan string cheese called quesillo — that one I ate sitting on a plastic folding chair right on Indiana Street, where it runs into César Chávez at Five Points in East L.A.
The third, who knows? A bean-smeared clayuda devoured while sitting curbside at the La Oaxaqueña truck on Lincoln at Rose in Venice? A tostada of fiercely hot aguachile, chopped marinated shrimp, eaten on a milk crate perched next to a Whittier Boulevard medical clinic? A spicy tongue taco eaten at El Pique, in the parking lot of a Highland Park car wash on York at Avenue 53? The carne asada taco at the El Chato truck on Olympic near La Brea, the tooth-staining red sauce at El Taquito Mexicana in Pasadena, the al pastor at El Taurino on Hoover at 11th near Macarthur Park? They all came from trucks; they all made me feel glad to be alive, glad to be in Los Angeles.
. . .
Why would an ordinarily sensible woman wait 45 minutes outside a truck to secure the same plate of food she could nab in one-tenth that time at the related taquería next door? Sure, it’s the communal experience, the great brotherhood of the taco-eaters, but it is also the food. In tacos as in love, timing is everything, and if you’ve ever inhaled a taco of pork al pastor moments after the slivers of dripping meat have been hacked from the spit, you know: At that moment, desire and fulfillment are one. A great street taco is happiness translated into the language of warm tortillas, finely chopped onion and a hot sauce that bring you to your knees. The taqueros will usually ask if you want your tacos wrapped to go, but I have never known an order to last even the few seconds it takes to walk back to the car.
Posted by Cyrus Farivar at April 23, 2008, 5:33 pm Pacific Time
Dear Friends,
Let me be the first to welcome you to this new group blog by a quintet of taco truck lovers. Inspired by the efforts at Slice and YumTacos, our mission here is to chronicle taco truck deliciousness mainly here in the Golden State. If you have taco truck news to share elsewhere, by all means do so, but our focus is mainly on the nexus of culinary mobility — California.
Sadly, as you can read through in our archives, taco trucks are under attack in this great land of ours. So, in the interests of preserving our multi-cultural and heterogeneous food scape, I urge you to support this great institution.
Posted by Cyrus Farivar at April 23, 2008, 5:14 pm Pacific Time
Let me be the first to say, this new LA County law is ludicrous, plain and simple. I really hope David LeBeouf is on the case. This is the same nonsensical argument that was used in Salinas last year.
Supervisors unanimously agreed to pass the law after business owners, particularly in East Los Angeles, complained that taco trucks were keeping brick-and-mortar restaurants from flourishing by drawing away customers.
“We have received many complaints from restaurant owners who say it is very hard to do business after 6 p.m. because catering trucks park very near restaurants,” said Louis Herrera, president of the Greater East Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. “Many restaurants are forced to close their doors because they cannot compete with a catering truck’s prices.”
Restaurant owners complained that the costs of operating a taco truck are minimal compared with the numerous bills that stationary businesses have to pay.
Posted by Cyrus Farivar at March 15, 2008, 5:04 pm Pacific Time
I’m sorry, but if you think it’s a good idea to start extorting taco truck owners — especially in Spokane, WA — for money, you’re probably not going to get very far.
A federal charge of impersonating an FBI agent has been filed against a multiple-time felon accused of extorting cash and taking the taco trailer used as the source of income for a Spokane businessman facing deportation.
In addition to the federal charge, Marwan Abdullah Nasser faces a state charge for allegedly kidnapping the son of taco vender Carlos Zuniga to back up extortion demands.
The self-employed businessman, who operated the popular “Tacos Tumbras” in Spokane and Spokane Valley, was told he could avoid deportation to Mexico and remain in Spokane if he paid cash bribes to a man he was told was an FBI agent, court documents say.
Zuniga, briefly detained last summer on pending civil deportation charges, later was introduced to Nasser by local Hispanic activist Carmella LeBlanc “who told Carlos (Zuniga) that Nasser was with the FBI,” the documents allege.
Posted by Cyrus Farivar at March 12, 2008, 5:02 pm Pacific Time
Starving Student: The cultural significance of taco trucks
By SARAH KINGSBURY
Article Launched: 03/12/2008 01:01:46 AM PDT
It’s nice to eat with people whose lunch cost less than $5.
Poor people make the world go round, and seem to have a much better understanding of the human condition than people who regularly eat at places like Nature’s Own. They also give better advice and have a better sense of humor than non-poor folks, because the best humor, like blues music, is derived from suffering and indignity.
It is not a secret that the highest-income earners in Chico are white people. So let’s go ahead and stop trying to pretend I’m being racist. Everyone is racist. And every journalist is biased. If you do not agree with the previous two statements, you probably understand the world much differently than I do, and will find this column at least partially offensive. Continue reading »
City Council members on Monday will cast the second of three votes on a requirement that all so-called “transient merchants” buy permits. Twelve vendors had permits last year; at least three times that number are in business. Those with leases of a year or longer do not require permits, which is what Councilman Brian Meyer wants to change.
“The one thing that absolutely has to happen is that everybody gets a permit, which is what we’re moving forward on,” Meyer said. “Everything else is negotiable.”
City officials have temporarily dropped the idea of higher permit fees and limits on the number of days a vendor can be in one location, whether it’s to sell food, tennis shoes or tie-dyed flags.
Critics said the tougher rules would put an unfair burden on legitimate businesses that barely eke out a profit. Others suggested that the proposals reflect racism against Hispanic entrepreneurs.
From our friends at SaveOurTacoTrucks.org:
Let me be the first to say, this new LA County law is ludicrous, plain and simple. I really hope David LeBeouf is on the case. This is the same nonsensical argument that was used in 
I’m sorry, but if you think it’s a good idea to start extorting taco truck owners — especially in Spokane, WA — for money, you’re probably not going to get very far.
Taco trucks in Iowa? Seriously? I’m astonished at how much I don’t know about the geographic diversity of taco trucks is our country.