Last Thursday was Taco Truck Day in LA, and we had fish tacos from our neighborhood place in a small gesture of solidarity. It wasn’t quite food on wheels, but we were all pretty tired and fish tacos from Best Fish were what we needed to cheer us up.
Taco Truck Day was started to protest the LA city’s new ordinance that makes taco trucks pull up stakes after one hour and drive a half a mile away. Then they can’t return for another three hours. That seems overly strict to me. So sympathizers were to eat at taco trucks all yesterday (May Day) in a show of support.
The city ordinance has effectively sent on the run those mobile grease units (and I say that lovingly) found at car washes, parked outside Koreatown minimalls, at key locations around Silver Lake, Echo Park, Highland Park, Boyle Heights, and out toward Alhambra. You can buy sturdy fish, shrimp, carnitas, or carne asada tacos for, like, a buck. A buck fifty. It’s a little bit of heaven in a warm corn tortilla.
We good, cheap food lovers/construction worker dudes/hipsters/neighborhood peeps want to see a little more leniency showed to these LA institutions. It seems they’ve been around forever and we all know the truck experience even if we’re not all frequent patrons.
What could be more LA than to eat a taco while you get your car washed? Food on wheels, man.
I’ve seen silvery trucks with cloth awnings stretched over the service window to give a little shade. If the truck is extra fancy, it’ll have that quilted steel exterior. Or maybe the truck is a plain white but there’s some detailing like what you’d get if your buddy pimped your truck: “Hecho en Jalisco” or “Angelina” in fancy script. (In Manila, they definitely pimped their jeepneys. Big time.)
There’s often a tiny condiment stand with the usual salsas (El Tapatio!!) and maybe some pickled radish or jalepeno peppers. Often you can buy a sickly-sweet Mexican soda that tastes like what they make you drink when they test your blood sugar for diabetes.
There’s almost never a place to sit.
And apparently that’s the problem–noise, crowded streets, public urination and littering, fewer parking spaces for residents. So now those trucks are on the run.
(Oh wait, today is Cinco de Mayo! Woo-hoo!)
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