Well friends, by the time you read this, an era will have ended. A delicious era I might add. That's right, starting today– Black Thursday– taco trucks in unincorporated parts of Los Angeles will be required to move every hour, effectively putting them out of business. Since this insanity was first proposed SaveOurTacoTrucks.org has been leading the crusade to save the roach coaches with a battle cry of, "Carne Asada is Not a Crime" and lots of informal protests where folks show up and… eat tacos. Sadly, it was to no avail. Last night marked the final protest. I'd already written to my useless supervisor Gloria Molina and expressed my outrage at the banning of the trucks. I even tried arguing that forcing the trucks to move every hour was environmentally irresponsible. But all I got back was a form letter thanking me for my "quality of life" concerns. Failure in hand (so to speak), I figured the least I could do is head down to East LA and eat (more) tacos. The quiet, peaceful gathering was attended by about 100 taco and taco truck lovers (half of whom I suspect of being food bloggers). The worst part? The five carne asada tacos I ate were frigging scrumptious– I'm still salivating some two hours later. And now they're gone, all gone. As far as protests go, I haven't had this much fun since I marched with Mario Savio against Proposition 187 back in 1994. Hasta la vista trocas.
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What was the rationale for requiring them to move every hour?
Being an attorney, my first thought is: define “move.” Can I move the truck forward 20 feet? I’m sure the parking police would give tickets like no tomorrow (it’s a safety thing, not at all revenue related!), but in court perhaps it would work out.
(I’m pretty sure the new regulation defines “move” with more specificity, but you never know. Most politicians aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs.)
I was wondering about the definition of move as well. If you rolled for 5 feet and then back 5 feet, technically you have moved.
What you need to do is hold a protest Michael Moore style.
Invite a mariachi band, cheerleaders, and a gay man’s choir to the next protest.
Being an attorney, my first thought is: define “move.”
I was curious about this myself. I didn’t find the ordinance, but a couple of blogs claimed that they had to move at least one-half mile. (I assume that if true that this is defined as the crow flies, and not by the odometer.)
I’ve heard half a mile, too.
Which of course creates multiple problems. One being that no one knows where the truck is. When I go for tacos from a truck (or, went) there was a particular truck I prefered.
Another is having to shut down (not sell tacos) for a period of time to get the truck ready to move. Selling $1.00 tacos ain’t exactly fat operating margins.
Sigh…
Easy. Get several taco trucks to form a partnership. Every hour they all move together, in a circular pattern, truck A moves to truck B’s spot, a half-mile apart, truck B moves to truck C’s spot, truck C moves to truck A’s spot. :D
There, they’ve moved.
Easy. Get several taco trucks to form a partnership. Every hour they all move together, in a circular pattern, truck A moves to truck B’s spot, a half-mile apart, truck B moves to truck C’s spot, truck C moves to truck A’s spot.
I was thinking along similar lines. It can be simpler than this — two trucks can do the Space Swap Shuffle with each other, back and forth, all day.
Since they’ve apparently set up a website to fight the ordinance, they should be using it now to coordinate with each other on the shuffle plan, and posting their locations so that their customers can find them.
It might even raise the quality, because customers who don’t like one vendor would just wait for the next guy to show up, which raises the bar for the weakest truck. They have to offer similar quality or find ways to differentiate from each other in order to keep the business.
as good as the shuffling sounds, I’m betting the truck owners wouldn’t see the other guy’s spot being as “good” as their current spot. thus you’d end up in arguments over who will end up at their preferred spots for the high traffic times (noon-1pm).
then you get into the issue of trucks that aren’t part of the agreement flying in and scooping up prime spots and your back to the current mess again.
as good as the shuffling sounds, I’m betting the truck owners wouldn’t see the other guy’s spot being as “good” as their current spot. thus you’d end up in arguments over who will end up at their preferred spots for the high traffic times (noon-1pm).
then you get into the issue of trucks that aren’t part of the agreement flying in and scooping up prime spots and your back to the current mess again.
They need to learn from their brethren, the day laborers — they would get more benefit from cooperating with each other than they would from competing against each other. Make an agreement about where each truck is going to go, and then stick to it.
I talked to a parking cop in Calgary one time. He told me that if his tire mark was no longer on the top of the tire, he counted the car as moved and marked it again. Maybe you should talk to the enforcers of the new law.
I think you reported on what the fines are, but it might be worth it to ignore the law. The cops love tacos, and likely won’t enforce this unless there is a complaint. Many of the trucks will likely get no complaints, and will then be unaffected.
Didn’t this start out as a ‘quality of life’ issue? Sounds to me like the quality of life just got worse for the taco hounds. In any case, ‘quality of life’ sounds like a GREAT example of arbitrary and capricious, which is a term lawyers can go to town on.
NickR :
May 15th, 2008 at 9:12 am
What was the rationale for requiring them to move every hour?
They don’t pay taxes like the brick and mortar restaurants do. Or did you mean the what was the BS excuse given by the politicians who enacted this regulation.