SFWeekly’s John Birdsall (see our interview with him from February 2009 here) blogs that last Friday, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department modified its solicitation for proposals to include Golden Gate Park. Previously, the solicitation had included all other SF park, save the mother of all City parks.

Further, the deadline for applications to vend in said parks would be pushed back from October 1, 2009 to October 15, 2009.

However, the R&P Dept. has made clear that it’s only interested in one operator for each park. However, that operator could have multiple concession stands.

So, theoretically a large taco truck empire like El Tonayense could expand its empire in various points of the park, or as Birdsall points out, La Cocina could act as the operator while its vendor members could sell individually. Or maybe there will be some kind of Transfomers-esque culinary collective.

Birdsall also has a revealing interview with Happy Belly owner Dennis Lee, the last former legal food vendor in Golden Gate Park — who operated there from mid-2006 until June of this year.

“I would say just realize this is not a normal landlord,” Lee told SFoodie, referring to Rec and Park. “It’s like going into business with the DMV.” The chef described a litany of frustrations he experienced with the city department, from limiting the kind of signage the Happy Belly carts could display to reluctance to intervene when hostile groundskeepers turned the sprinklers on in what Lee called acts of harassment.

Share on Facebook