Street Vendor Hot Dogs

I'm keeping a journal of my experiences while interning as a Community Organizer at the Street Vendor Project, and was thinking the other day about my personal relationship to NYC street vendor food.

I'm a fourth generation native Brooklynite, and the earliest food memory of my entire life is eating hot dogs from a cart with my dad at McKinley Park in Bay Ridge. The twang of the sauerkraut moistened the bun into a soft gluey cradle for the most delicious, salty, spicy boiled hot dog with a mustard blanket. It was special food, not to be confused with anything I might eat at home. And it was "daddy food", a small collection of food that came to my stomach exclusively via my dad that also included sunnyside up "pink" eggs and "protein shakes" made with strawberry ice cream. While these days I'm more likely to buy fruit from a vendor than prepared food, I still eat a hot dog about once a year. Even though I know what’s in them, street vendor hot dogs are food that tastes like memories to me, and no amount of fact-therapy is going to change that.

My dad enjoyed street vendor hot dogs with his father, in the same neighborhood, maybe even on that same street corner. Long before Nathan's was famous, there were German immigrants selling hot dogs all over the city from push carts. Maybe the so-called dirty water in the carts is part of what makes New Yorkers so naturally resilient. There's also implied physical activity to eating street food. You are eating it because you are obviously on the street, not in a car. That implied exercise perhaps absolves street vendor food from ever being labeled as junk food. No matter what you are eating, you are burning calories as you walk away from the cart!

Note: If I've managed to offend any public health or nutrition people, you should know that's why I'm a Food Studies person.