Leave it to Los Angeles to make a law that will endanger small businesses, create more air pollution, inconvenience people, and waste gasoline. The “Taco Truck” ordinance will require these mobile restaurants to move around and will forbid them from staying in one location for more than an hour.
The NY Times reports how this started:
“They are a blight,” said Omar Loya of East Los Angeles who took his complaints about the trucks to the office of his county supervisor, Gloria Molina.
Ms. Molina’s policy director, Gerry Hertzberg, said the trucks had become “a big quality of life issue” in some neighborhoods.
“Businesses with a fixed place of business complain about unfair competition and the spillover effects mobile vendors have on the surrounding area,” Mr. Hertzberg said, citing litter, noise, public urination and excessive parking space hoarding as typical complaints.
I live in a neighborhood near Sepulveda and Victory without any taco trucks. Yet we also have litter, noise, public urination and excessive traffic.
Taco Trucks provide a cheap and easy way for people to feed themselves. They bring life to the sidewalk and neighborhood, far more than the ugly sight of the mini-mall restaurant that typically blights much of Los Angeles.
Just today, I ate a fresh shrimp Cerviche taco at the wonderful “Mariscos El Manglar” in East LA near E. Olympic and S. Downey Road. It cost me all of $3.00.
Next month, this wonderful business will spend half the day driving around, burning gas and adding to the air pollution in an already poisonously smoggy neighborhood.
Good work Ms. Molina.
Here in Van Nuys 