An interesting thought by an interesting fellow who's more well known for his modernist art than his philosophical comments but it struck a chord with me when I began thinking about food trucks.
Yes. Food trucks. Yuck wagons. Street meat. Vagabond veal vendors. Whatever you'd like to call them.
If for some reason you've been living off the grid, haven't watched the Food Network in 5 years, or live in an area with less than 3 persons per square mile, you might not know what a food truck is. I'll be succinct in my description of a food truck.
It's a truck that pulls up to a densely populated place at specific times and serves food out of the side of the it's window. That's it.
A glorified carpetbagger.
You don't agree?
Catchy name? Yarp.
Promises of something new? Mhmm
Able to flee on demand should business slow down? Check.
Trying to extract the gold from the fool? To an extent.
Now before you grab your torches, pitchforks and bags-o-tar-and-feather, I'm as big of a fan of food trucks as the next guy. I've been eating at them since I first saw a jolly Mexican entrepreneur selling poletas on Main Street in Mesa, AZ outside of the Goodwill. I love halaal food trucks in NYC and my favorite truck in Boston is Momogoose. (Mormon waterfowl you say? No, just some tasty korean sold out of a pretty red truck.)
This craze has taken off within the past 3 or so years. However, it's hardly anything that is new or fancy. I'm hesitant to call it a fad as food trucks have been around for nearly 150 years a la Charles Goodnight and the Chuckwagon. Mr. Goodnight was an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to provide food for our country's westward drive after the Civil War in attempts to fulfill our Manifest Destiny.
I don't know about you but if some dude rolled up with sticky buns, hot coffee, and a nicely seared flank steak, I too would go raise an army, declare myself General El Guapo, (bandoliers and handle bar moustache sold separately) and try to overthrow the Panama government myself. Now, I'm not going to give Charles all the credit in America's westward expansion but having decent food certainly helps.
Think this guy ever had to deal with people pestering him if it's free range beef or how well it pairs with an IPA?
So why the craze now? In a world that is arguably too obsessed with the latest and greatest trinkets, baubles and fads, why has this 150 year old idea taken us, the consumer, by firestorm?
Better yet, why do the hipsters that patronize these food trucks sneer at me when I stand in the same line as them?
Newsflash: wearing Chuck Taylors, $200 pencil leg jeans, bold rimmed glasses that serve no optical purpose, and the latest vintage t-shirt doesn't make you look cool. You look like les mouflons that Urban Outfitter had in mind when they slapped together their fall catalog.
While I am unable to answer the latter question as it's physically impossible to impart logic into the 5-inch space between hipsters' ears, let's look at the former.
Food trucks provide cheap food. However, it's not inordinately cheaper than their bricks & mortar restaurant cousins. The food, while tasty, is mass prepared on some level and is limited in their ability to improvise. Sticking a sprig of thyme on my pre-made chicken doesn't make it inspiring, it's just good culinary sense. It's not really any faster than fast food joints either. It's a concept that's been around for ages and been reproduced ad nauseam. That's what we humans do according to Man Ray.
So what then? Is it simply the combination of the above: relatively cheap, relatively fast, and relatively tasty?
Have we been boiled down to just relative comparisons?
I don't think so. I think it's as simple as being in the open air, albeit for 10 minutes before we rush back to our land of cubes and beige carpeting.
Inside this "outside" theory are many contributing characteristics. Is it an emotional response to each individual's experiences? Eating a burger and fries while sitting on the beach? Sitting around a campfire eating Dinty Moore stew with the family?
True story #1: I've eaten Dinty Moore stew that fell out of the bowl and onto a patch of sandy dirt that was probably contaminated with bat guano and cigarette butts and it tasted delicious. My brother can attest to this.
All because I was merely breathing the fresh air. I then tried it while sitting inside and it tasted like 3 day old cat food. Go ahead and try it. Just make sure the bat guano is aged properly.
Is it our biological past speaking to us? Is it the cosmic echoes of a cave man sitting over a fresh kill while discussing the effects of global warming and declining mammoth population that is being channeled through us?
Possibly the rebel in each of us saying to "The Man" that:
"No, you will not seat me next to the annoying couple that only talk about their facebook updates and how tasty their potent potables are or next to the kitchen door so I can be maimed by the egregiously large appetizers possibly falling onto my lap! I choose the great outdoors known as the park bench that is used on a nightly basis by drifters as their personal urinals or their thrones in attempts to chase the dragon."
Is it simply human beings desire to be in motion?
Whatever it is, food simply tastes better outside. When you're offered the choice of sitting outside or inside, what do you pick? Even when it's the view of a parking lot or highway, we gravitate towards the outdoors. So forget the lavender infused dry rub or cage-free asparagus tacos.
Just add a little mixture of 3 parts nitrogen and 1 part oxygen with a splash of water vapor, dusting of carbon dioxide and a pinch xenon* and I'll be there Mr. Chuckwagon.
* - that's roughly the composition of the air we breathe for those unable to piece that asinine reference together you knuckle dragging mouth breathers
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