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I live in NYC, and I see food trucks everywhere. Someone parking their car versus a food truck doesn't even compare. Like Thomas, I enjoy food trucks, but I w
by marcinw 16y ago
I live in NYC, and I see food trucks everywhere. Someone parking their car versus a food truck doesn't even compare. Like Thomas, I enjoy food trucks, but I wouldn't want them being able to just park anywhere. Food trucks attract many people, and thus result in more litter, noise, beggers etc; that's something I just don't want at my doorstep everyday.
- ultrasaurus 16y agoI think everyone can agree (relentless optimism ensues) that we hope the licensing costs cover the externalites (parking, waste clean up), which mitigates that to some extent. That still leaves property values as an issue.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI'm not opposed to regulating food trucks for crowd control reasons. Nor would I object to charging them license fees proportional to their impact (e.g., cost of additional litter cleanup) - in fact, I'd strongly support that. But that's not tptacek's objection - his objection is that many people will prefer Starbucks Truck to Intelligentsia, which might cause Intelligentsia to go out of business. This would deprive him of the coffee he desires, and he is willing to deprive everyone else of the coffee they desire to protect his preferred coffee.
- tptacek 16y agoHonestly, I don't care; I go to Starbucks 40% of the time and Intelligentsia 60% of the time (Intelligentsia is on the first floor of my business). The reason I brought up Starbucks was to take the "underdog vs. establishment" subtext out of the discussion, because it isn't relevant, but was essentially the theme of the article we're commenting on.