Pickle Over Push Carts

© Gerald San Jose foodite

New Yorkers recently celebrated the 7th Annual International Pickle Day! But pickles weren't always welcome on Lower East Side streets.

Suzanne Wasserman's (Metropolitan Studies, NYU) paper, The Good Old Days of Poverty: Merchants and the Battle Over Pushcart Peddling on the Lower East Side posted on the Business History Conference website describes that 1920s New York Lower East Side merchants, together with city officials, developers and city planners sought to bannish push carts on the basis that they were a nuisance and an embarassment.

The merchants, clothed as altruistic reformers, wanted to replace them with more "conventional prosperity".

Thomas A. Edison found the Orchard St. push cart debate so newsworthy he made at least two nickleodean actualities of the area, one called "Move On" which depicts the very cold shoulder given to street vendors in the area.

And despite Mayor LaGuardia's support of the merchant's cause, through obsessive opposition to street peddling, Ms. Wasserman points out that within twenty years, the East Side business community sought a U-turn on cart removal; having found that it was the push carts that created the character that attracted custom. In effect, they had thrown the pickles out with the push carts!

Do Toronto archives illustrate a similar exodus? Are we now experiencing a reversal?

At least one neighbourhood across the pond (St Mary Axe / St Marks Bevis) has taken steps to have their Gherkin noticed and secure for the future.

Kernel Knowledge

© Carl Derrick [Flickr.com]

Any street-eats staulker will tell you about the powerfully addictive qualities of Elote. Reading like an indictment on a culinary controlled drugs list charge, who could resist corn, butter, salt, lime juice, chili, cheese and mayonaise on a stick or in a cup?

You don't have to love Bacon (Francis) to admire what Carl Derrick captures in his Elote Triptych, above.

I cannot see any reason why Toronto City Council would not want these sold on the street, except perhaps the corresponding need to erect barricades to control the ensuing stampede to the nearest vendor.

Ontario produces a bounty of corn. Perhaps when Toronto was only knee high, eating local produce on the street seemed unsophisticated. But now that we have built it, they should come.

Cart, Food and Vendor

The trinity of cart, food and vendor and the meaning and importance of street food are being re-examined. Those who believe that mustard, ketchup and relish are the way to nirvana are being challenged.

Whilst Toronto City Council ponders Ontario's new street food vending regulations and the exciting cart vending projects and other initiatives seeking greater food diversity are underway, lets not forget the guy or gal behind the grill.

I am grateful to Jennifer Bain, Toronto Star Food Editor, who today mentions in her column a short documentary about Marianne Moroney, who has run a hot dog cart outside Mount Sinai Hospital for nine years. Watch this video and ask yourself if street vending is an important element of city life and urban planning.

It may be a little premature, while we are still fed only a strick diet of pre-cooked meat on a bun, to commence awards similar to the Vendy Awards, held by Sean Basinski's (lawyer and former Mexican food vendor @ Park Avenue and 52nd Street) New York based Street Vendor Project.

I am hopeful that when we come to recognize a greater diversity of both cart and food on Toronto's streets, that the individual vendor and his or her unique contribution to our streetscape are not forgotten.

Photograph above © Michael Fletcher [Flickr.com]

Re-inventing the Cart Wheel

Okay, okay - street vending didn't start with a lemonade stand.

I am grateful to the National Charrette Institute for explaining the meaning and origins of the word "charrette". While being French for "cart", it also can mean the final deadline beating efforts of architecture students, referring as it does to the cart sent around in 19th century schools to collect final drawings.

So it is apt that the design competition (charrette, as it were) to herald in the new street vending regulations be of a - street vending cart!

As part of the Street Food Vending Project, Multistory Complex, in partnership with Professor Lorella Di Cintio of Ryerson University, Faculty of Communication and Design, has convened a Vending Cart Design Competition for Toronto street food vending carts.

The jury is presently evaluating the submissions and the results and prizes will be announced at the 2007 Food Festival, styled Arts and Ideas Festival - FOOD - Local meets Global, presented by Alphabet City. The research on street vending will also be published in Alphabet City's FOOD anthology, due out in October, 2007

Extremely helpful to anyone who has entered the competition are two video webcasts of Snack Chats (hosted by Multistory Complex and Ryerson University), called The Designing of a Vending Cart and the Vendor’s Experiences and The Role of Street Food and Vending in the City.