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Upper West Side Up In Arms Over Food Truck Invasion!
By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Jun 21, 2011
Modified Jun 21, 2011
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By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Jun 21, 2011
Modified Jun 21, 2011
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It seems like just the other day that Park Slope restaurant owners were all up in arms about dirty, cheapskate food trucks stealing all their customers, and now, the Upper West Side is jumping on the food truck bashing bandwagon, too. But of course, this being the UWS, it's not restaurants that are complaining—it's crotchety residents who find the trucks unsavory to behold.
"We all pay a lot of money to live where we're living and it just makes the street look horrible," said Gladys Bourdain, who's lived at the Dorchester Towers on West 68th St for 26 years. "If this is the standard that we're going to live by, we might as well give up and live in a slum." Another resident griped, "The amount of food trucks we have right now, it's the wild west. You give them a hand, they'll take an arm," before singling out Pot Luck Cafe, which serves pizza and Philly cheesesteaks to plebes like "doorman, building staff and employees from Food Emporium." Golly, the next thing you know, the neighborhood's going to be overrun with schwarma-loving hoodlums! Better lock and load your Bushmasters, Upper West Side.
And it looks as though Bourdain and her cronies aren't alone—earlier this month, City Council member Jessica Lappin (from the Upper East Side) introduced a new local law giving the Department of Health authority to suspend any vending permit issued to a truck with two parking tickets a year, and revoke the permit of a truck that receives three parking tickets in a year. To put in perspective, the owner of the Wafels & Dingels trucks says he gets an average of three parking tickets a month. As Midtown Lunch puts it, "the result will essentially be to put all food trucks out of business."
Tagged
food trucks
street food
unsightly
Upper West Side
Jamie Feldmar
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