9.1. SR 11-20-2017 - Laserfiche WebLink

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11/13/2017 Are Food Trucks Good or Bad for the Twin Cities? | streets.mn https://streets.mn/2012/07/09/are-food-trucks-good-or-bad-for-the-twin-cities/5/14 A soon-to-be-food truck-inspired restaurant. Believers in the free market should embrace them. Third, and most importantly, food trucks are something that takes place outside. Food trucks get people out into all the underused plazas, parks, and sidewalks of the Twin cities. They lure you into the fresh air, out of the cursed skyways and tunnels and into the bright rays of sunshine reality. They beckon you onto the picnic tables, to perch on sittable ledges, to find the shade of the maple trees. This has to be one of their chief attractions. For too long, Minnesotans have been allowed to wallow in their agoraphobic meteorologic bubble, being scared by Sven Sundegaard and Mark Seele into thinking that it’s too cold or hot or windy or sunny or humid to open the door. We huddle in our skyways and our air-conditioning, squinting at the outside world that we are convinced will reject us like Mars in Total Recall. Well screw that! Food trucks are the perfect excuse to liberate the be-bubbled masses. They’re a ‘Get Out of A/C Free’ card. In a way, walking to a food truck to buy an $8 taco is a subliminal excuse to break free of our climate-controlled cubes. And anything that can get people out of their buildings and their cars and into the parks, anything that can get butts perched along the riverbluff, well it’s good in my book. Are there limits to the food truck phenomenon? Should there be a limits to food trucks? Can they go too far? Or is there plenty of room for both trucks and bricks and mortar restaurants in the Twin Cities? I don’t know the answer. After my visit to Portland Oregon last year, I was impressed by the huge variety of food trucks AND interesting local businesses. Maybe this is a case where urban space isn’t simply a zero sum game. Maybe the more we revitalize our public spaces, the more people enjoy spending time and money in the city, the more business there is to go around. I’d like to think that this is the kidn of addititve situation where everybody wins. Maybe it’s a fad or maybe it’s the future. But I hope we don’t have to choose between food trucks and public spaces and having good cafés in actual buildings. Every time someone leaves the skyway system to grab lunch a food truck on the sidewalk, the future of Minneapolis looks a little bit brighter.