First off, my apologies for the lack of posting these last couple weeks. Been busy with other work, mainly my book project, and the usual freelancing.

Also, my interviews with David LeBeouf and Philip Greenwald haven’t happened yet — we kept playing phone and email tag, but I’m going to stay on them and try to get an interview up on the site.

Anyway, onto the news, this time, from Patterson, Calif.

The Modesto Bee:

Council members unanimously supported a new mobile food vendor ordinance, which limits sales to paved surfaces, requires vendors to provide on-site parking, and limits trucks’ hours to 8 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Mayor Becky Campos disliked a portion of the ordinance that requires new food vendors to buy a $1,140 conditional-use permit.

“It seems a little bit elevated,” she said.

City staff said it would reconsider that fee, and bring it back to the council.

Juan Daniel Virgen, who represented the group by summarizing their concerns to the council, called the decision a success.

Vendors who already have business licenses and have paid their fees won’t be affected by the new ordinance unless they move their business elsewhere in the city.

It comes more than a year after talk of regulation began.

Neighbors’ complaints that the trucks draw loud crowds late into the night to a dusty strip of land along railroad tracks along First Street ignited the issue.

Councilman Sam Cuellar, who brought the issue to the council, said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone’s business.

Vendors said they are just trying to make an honest living.

“Like everyone, I dream of living a little better, and of being somebody in life so my children could be proud of their parents and what they’ve accomplished,” Joaquin Pelayo said.

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I’m not sure which is more strange, that hot cooking oil was fired up while a taco truck is in motion, or that a taco truck was being driven by a Vietnamese(-American?) woman.

Contra Costa Times:

CONCORD — A woman was badly burned by hot cooking oil after the taco truck she was riding in collided with another car this afternoon on Interstate 680.

The collision occurred at 1:56 p.m. on southbound I-680, north of Concord Avenue, California Highway Patrol Officer Tom Maguire said.

The Chevrolet taco truck, driven by 49-year-old Thu Phan of San Jose, was travelling south in the left-hand lane at 55 mph. In the lane to the right of the truck, a 1995 Mitsubishi sedan driven by 19-year-old Iris Lopez, of Antioch, was also driving south.

Maguire said Lopez later told officers she thought the taco truck was merging into her lane, so she swerved to the right. The taco truck never attempted to change lanes, Maguire said. Lopez then over-corrected and swerved back to the left, striking the taco truck. The front of the truck slammed against the driver’s side front door of the sedan.

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The City of Turlock (a neighboring town of Modesto, Calif.) is butting heads with a taco truck owner as to what type of construction is and isn’t allowed.

The Modesto Bee:

Mariscos Camino Real opened two months ago with a food wagon and seafood-only menu in an empty lot next to a small car dealership. Owner Ignacio Ochoa went to the Planning Department shortly after with ideas for improvements, including a concrete pad and heavy canopy tent under which patrons can eat.

No concrete and no construction, he was told.

Ochoa and his partner, Rudy Yanez, put down brick pavers, planters filled with small palms and ficus trees, a fountain and a 24 foot-by-40 foot collapsible outdoor-event tent. Ten stone tables with custom tile tops were installed. Two speakers were hung high in the tent rafters. The men spent $80,000 and ended up with a polished outdoor eating space on a patch of leased land.

“Our goal was to change perception,” Yanez said last week. “All taco trucks are not the same. It’s not filthy. There’s space to eat.”

City officials weren’t exactly charmed.

“We went out there for another call and saw it,” said Debbie Whitmore, the city’s planning director. “The reaction was ‘Oh, my God!’ It grew beyond how it was described to us.”

Tension between taco trucks and government isn’t new. Los Angeles County supervisors in April made parking a mobile food operation in the same place for more than an hour a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine or six months in jail. Riverbank uses a similar ordinance to effectively ban them. Vendors can’t spend more than 15 minutes in the same spot. The Patterson City Council is in the process of revising its taco truck policy. Modesto only allows mobile food vendors on industrial-zoned land, hence the concentration by the railroad tracks on Eighth Street. Ceres doesn’t allow them.

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Ok, I’m a little late to this one, but apparently a taco truck right here in my own backyard — Los Compadres (Hayes St. and Polk St. near San Francisco’s City Hall Plaza — was going to be removed as per the request of the lot’s owner, Central Parking Systems. A concerned and intrepid taco aficionado, Matthew Goudeau, started a Facebook group and a small campaign to persuade CPS to let the truck continue to serve its delicious wares, and I’m happy to announce that it worked!

The San Francisco Sentinel and Goudeau’s Facebook group report that the truck has been saved! I just might have to go over there next week to get a celebratory taco — or three.

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Kudos to The Associated Press for being the first nationwide news organization to cover the first ticketing of LA County taco trucks.

AP:

A truck called La Flor de Sahuayo was cited Wednesday by the parking enforcement detail after neighbors filed 20 complaints about it the past four months, said Sheriff’s Lt. Linda Martinez, who declined to detail the complaints.

Alejandro Valdovino, who owns the truck, said he parks it in front of his restaurant in East Los Angeles.

“The policeman arrived with the citation in his hand,” Valdovino said in Spanish in a phone interview Friday. “He didn’t tell me to move. He just came and handed me the ticket.”

“It’s not right what they’re doing,” he said.

Phillip Greenwald, a lawyer who has consulted with taco truck owners, said Valdovino received a misdemeanor citation, and faces up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail if convicted.

We’ll have an interview with Philip Greenwald next week, and with Northern California taco truck attorney David LeBeouf.

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Well, we’ve got our new law served now with a side of tickets — La Flor de Suhayo got hit by LA County Sheriff’s deputies earlier this week.

The LA Times notes that Hoy, a Spanish-language daily in LA first reported the story (link in Spanish).

Here’s the Google machine translation:

East Los Angeles – has already started nightmare for many owners of “loncheras” of East Los Angeles, after the authorities fine, apparently for the first time, one of the owners of these businesses rolling for longer stay what is allowed in one place.

“The whole week had been working normally, each passing the ‘ticketera’ I moved and then returned to the place,” he told TODAY Alejandro Valdoviño, owner of the “lunch box” The Flower of Sahuayo, who was an infringement by agents of the Department of Sheriff.

Valdoviño explained that he parks their “lunch box” just in front of a restaurant owned bearing the same name. “Yesterday I had not even time to move, the police just came to the offense in his hand. I said that I move, and came just handed me the ticket, “he added Valdoviño adding that unknown quantity that will have to pay the fine because it does not specify the figure only indicates that they will have to present in court.

Continue reading »

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Amigos, our taco trucks are being attacked once again, but this time in North Carolina.

Now I’m not as familiar with North Carolina law regarding this matter, but I’ve scoured the North Carolina Chapter 20 law as it pertains to motor vehicles and haven’t found any provisions like our Section 22455 here in the Golden State.

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Some police and public officials have complained that the taco trucks that line South Boulevard and Central Avenue near immigrant neighborhoods attract crime. Neighbors have complained of noise, traffic problems and fumes.

Katrina Young, zoning administrator for the Charlotte Zoning Board of Adjustment, said the proposed ordinance provides greater flexibility to mobile vendors than current regulations while protecting residents who live close by.

Terms of the ordinance, which the council voted to send to its public safety committee for a recommendation, include:

• Limiting mobile food vendors to a maximum of 90 days in one location each year.
• Outlawing operation within 400 feet of a residential district.
• Operating hours would be between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

“It’s an effort to provide more time for mobile food vendors and protect neighborhoods affected by them,” Young said. “Move them more into the business area.”

“Protect neighborhoods” ? Please. We’re talking about tacos here.

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My friends, taco trucks are not just under attack in Los Angeles, but also in Taft, Calif., just outside Bakersfield.

Apparently in the late 1930s, a replica of Sutter’s Fort (in Sacramento, Calif.) was constructed in the fair city of Taft. While it’s not immediately clear to me why a 19th century fort needed to be rebuilt 300 miles away in a small town of less than 10,000 people, that’s not the point here. The point here is that for now, a taco truck called Janie’s Mexican food is being allowed to stay, after being under threat by the city. Again, city staff alleged that it had an “unfair advantage” than traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants. How is selling a better product at a lower price “unfair” ? Please.

Here’s the Taft Midway Driller:

The business, which serves food out of a trailer, was in danger of being forced to leave its place in the Fort’s parking lot when Taft City staff decided it was not in compliance with city codes and had an unfair advantage over businesses in permanent buildings.

But the staff reversed their recommendation Tuesday night and the Taft planning Commission voted 4-0 to approve a precise development permit to allow the trailer to park at the Fort on weekdays to sell tacos and other Mexican food for at least one more year. The vote came after Commissioner Curtis Walchock offered a compromise – approve her permit for a year. By that time, City planner Lawrence Tomasello had told the commission, the city will have a new code to permit temporary business on an annual basis for up to five years.

If they approved the trailer with no time provisions, Tomasello said, she said have permanent status.

Tomasello quickly would staff would change it’s recommendation with that provision.

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Despite all the idiocy in this new LA County law restricting taco trucks, The Associated Press reports that the law may not be enforced very strongly and many taco truckers would continue to serve their tacos as they have been for years in a bout of carnitas-fueled civil disobedience.

AP:

Several taco truckers said they would simply ignore it, and a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department indicated deputies wouldn’t exactly be racing to enforce it.

In addition to fines, violators could be jailed for up to six months if they don’t move their truck within an hour of parking it. Under the old law, they had to move every 30 minutes, but few did because the penalty was only $60.

In heavily Hispanic East Los Angeles, where eating carnitas, quesadillas, cemitas and other Latin-flavored delicacies purchased from a lunch wagon is practically a rite of passage, people were as hot about the issue as a plate of carne asada.

“What? That’s terrible! That’s terrible!” shouted Roy Mendoza, upon learning that the Tacos El Galuzo truck he and his family have been patronizing for years might have to start hopscotching around town.

. . .

In fact, Mendoza said, the truck is cleaner, serves better food and at about half the price than many of the nearby restaurants he’s been in.

“It’s not about the restaurants. It’s about the food. We go where the food is good,” he said.

When the law was adopted on April 15, local business people said it was about the competition restaurants faced from truckers. Restaurateurs had complained for years that with little overhead costs, the truckers were eating their lunch.

“Look around, what do you think? They take away a lot of my business,” said Hor Lee, gesturing to her empty restaurant’s seating area. She has operated the Chinatown Express in a strip mall just a half-mile down the street from Torres’ truck for 11 years. Business was fine until about a year ago, she said, when two other trucks moved just around the corner from her.

“My rent is almost $5,000 a month,” she said. “We pay for electricity. We pay for workers. We pay a lot of bills. I think the taco trucks pay maybe only one bill, for a permit. It’s not fair.”

But Torres, who also wasn’t moving his vehicle, said he has far more costs than the average person realizes, starting with the $65,000 he paid for his truck. He also must pay to insure it, pay for a business license and a Health Department permit, and pay a local commissary for overnight parking.

Then there are food and employee costs and the rent he pays to the stereo store so his customers can use its parking lot.

On Wednesday night, he was a man in perpetual motion, fueling the generator that powers his stove, unloading cases of soda and water, and helping his son take orders in Spanish and English. Meanwhile, two employees grilled up huge portions of pork and beef as a steady flow of customers surrounded him.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Thursday that deputies “certainly will enforce the law, but whether or not this will be a priority may be another question.”

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Vallejo’s Times-Herald is getting on the bandwagon, providing some positive taco truck news for once. Apparently the paper has just discovered that Vallejo’s got great taco trucks of its own.

The Times-Herald writes:

There’s another draw, too: trucks are cheap. At just over a buck per taco, dinner and drinks for two probably won’t top $10.

“People in Vallejo, we watch our money,” said Matt King, a tow truck driver who eats at a truck about once a week. King is something of a taco truck connoisseur; he has his favorites, but he’ll go to whichever truck is closest to where he happens to be – and he knows what to order at each one.

On a recent Tuesday evening, King sang the praises of the burrito from Dos Hermanos, at Sereno Drive and Sonoma Boulevard. At about $3, it’s one of the best deals in town, he said.

A few months back, I did my own mini crawl through some Vallejo spots, and hit Dos Hermanos. You can check out my photos here.

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