Where is this, and why is it not your average food cart?
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It’s in Portland. No surprise there, for those who have followed the migration of food carts up the west coast (some think the trend began in Los Angeles, or really Mexico – and has its roots in the Hispanic community. Others think it’s Asian derived). Portland put on its own twist – since the Rose City is home to so many innovations that involve small entrepreneurs, whether it’s about burritos, barristas or beer. (Here’s an insightful article – Generation Sell – with a distinctive Portland perspective, in the New York Times.*)
Arguably, food carts wouldn’t have made it in Vancouver without overcoming the reticence of our public health officers (“Only hot dogs and popcorn – that’s it!”). But Portland, by proving that their citizens didn’t drop dead by consuming comestibles from a cart, made it possible for politicians here to move it forward. (Thank you, Heather Deal.)
But this particular cart is just one of a cluster – a food court in a parking lot. The D Street Noshery consists of nine unique carts at 3221 Division, on a piece of under-performing asphalt (map here) along one of the reviving streetcar corridors of Portland’s east side. There’s even a mini-brew pub in a tent. And this is just one of several that dot the city’s inner suburbs, proving that cart culture is not just a downtown phenomenon. What seems to be helpful, though, is a ready market of hipsters-on-bikes and a supportive public culture looking for tasty, creative fast food (chains verboten!) at reasonable prices.
So where should the first noshery show up in Vancouver? How about on the northeast corner of Granville and Davie, in the slot of a parking lot between the Dance Centre and the Howard Johnson’s (view here).
* The small business is the idealized social form of our time. Our culture hero is not the artist or reformer, not the saint or scientist, but the entrepreneur. (Think of Steve Jobs, our new deity.) Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurship comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.