Hey NY, it's not a taco cart—it's a taco truck.
That’s just the tip of the willful ignorance that’s displayed in Jennifer Steinhauer’s report of the taco truck resistance for The New York Times. As the venerable rag’s Los Angeles bureau chief, Ms. Steinhauer must have self-imposed a quota for epithets directed to the city of which she writes but in which she obviously wants no part.
How else to explain that starting from the headline “In Taco Truck Battle, Mild Angelenos Turn Hot” to the first 15 words in, “Los Angeles, loath to rally cohesively around a local cause, has joined hands around tortillas,” she manages to get in three potshots, aimed at stereotypical notions of the city’s indifference, its disunity, and its absurd obsessions—in this case, leading to a kumbaya session about a circle of masa.
She’s on a roll: “This a (sic) where you can pave over a freeway’s carpool lanes with toll roads, and few will complain. You can propose a 40-story skyrise in the center of Hollywood, and hardly anyone two miles to the west will take notice. You can squander public money, close down the ports and flatten landmarks, and many residents of this sprawling metropolis will simply yawn and move on.” Good one, Jen: we’re so laidback, we couldn’t give a crap. We’ve never heard that one before.
In drawing upon predictable stereotypes, Steinhauer presumes that food is not in itself political. While we stupid Angelenos fail to notice real issues like architectural blights on our skyline or the mismanagement of municipal funds, the food-obsessed have rallied around something as inconsequential as taco “carts.” Steinhauer at once minimizes the gravity of the issue and the accompanying call-to-arms while also failing to recognize that food plays a significant role in dispensing culture. And in a place as complex as L.A., food is the first, if not only, ambassador that enables communication between disparate and varied communities.
Yes, taco trucks are about as authentic or integral to Mexican cuisine as bacon-wrapped hot dogs from a mini cart. But like those hot dog carts—which are a far cry from the NYC street carts that Steinhauer must be used to—they are but one representation of the resourcefulness and fortitude that sustain L.A.’s immigrant communities.
What’s patently clear is that Ms. NYT-L.A.-bureau-chief has little experience with our city's street food. A truck is hardly the same as a cart—the difference is but too real for vendors who have yet to save up for one. Moreover, tacos have little to do with the Spaniards. Indeed, when it comes to writing about California, The New York Times would do well to reconsider its style convention: Please, please stop calling them Hispanics.
—Jiyeon Yoo
