The lovely Audrey Eschright, part mastermind behind the Portland Food Cart Map, is seeking submissions for her newest endeavor:
Details are on Audrey’s Website, or here is an excerpt from her personal blog:
In the last few months, Portland’s food cart scene has been getting an increasing amount of media attention. I don’t really want to duplicate that: I think Food Carts Portland is doing a great job of documenting what carts are out there. Instead, I’m looking to make a sort of fanzine about what we like about our carts, and street food around the world. What makes this fun? Why are you at Whiffies at 1am three times a week? What surprises you (in good and bad ways)?
To that end, I’m looking for photos, essays, pirate maps, and other documents about street food experiences. You can find more details about the format and what I’ll be doing on the website, and the link to submit.
Hey, count me in!
I’d love to see an essay on carts as human-scale capitalism; the role they play in business incubation and entreprenurialism; increasing interaction between proprietors and consumers (immediate feedback, knowing where your money goes, etc.); the place of family in cart businesses (lots of family-run operations); the phenomenon of carts as urban catalysts, turning urban voids (street-level parking) into vibrant living urban fabric that exhibit characteristics of classic markets/bazaares/public squares; social interaction via carts (as opposed to social separation via chains); personal stories of the proprietors as to why they wanted to create a cart (with probably many fascinating travel stories and histories), etc. So many fascinating topics to be explored. Kudos on the project.
I’d be interested perhaps in doing some interviews–maybe you could sort of also create a cart-questionnaire to get some data on carts, or to create little profiles of the owner-chefs of various carts?