The curtains were drawn as I left my Bushwick apartment but there was no mistaking the grey sky filtering through the thin floral-pattern material. Outside it proved to be no better, and I clung to my umbrella as the wind attempted to turn it inside out. The rain did not dissipate, and for several blocks I witnessed several others struggle onward against the elements, rushing forward without a second glance at the various food stands populating the sidewalk.
“No one wants to come when it rains,” Guillermo Borzola says through his thick black mustache. Borzola, an Ecuadorian immigrant, sells empanadas on the corner of Knickerbocker Ave and Stanhope St.
It is a quiet Sunday morning on Knickerbocker Ave in Bushwick, a neighborhood in the northern eastern part of Brooklyn. It's here I come across a sea of oversized umbrellas, so big one could easily find them fixed to a patio table. Instead it is attached to a food stand.
Food stands have long served as a supplementary or even primary source of income for vendors, historically in immigrant communities. The authentic Latin-American food available in this tucked away neighborhood of Bushwick is a far cry from the upscale food trucks of Manhattan that have become increasingly more popular. However, despite the discrepancy of the two locations, their presence has long been apart of New York City’s landscape. Its culture stemming from the same humble beginnings, as well as its current lack of proper regulation.
“The first four peddlers set up pushcarts on Hester Street in 1866,” the Department of Public Markets first reported in 1927. “For the next 75 years, the open-air pushcart market remained an institution of immigrant life on the Lower East Side.”
In many ways this immigrant community of Bushwick retains that feeling of old New York. Encased in each vendor’s stand is a food product that is representative of the culture they left behind. The food being sold differs from stand to stand. Some have handwritten signs advertising what they’re selling, others verbally tell pedestrians as they pass by. It can range from horchata—a Mexican rice drink accentuated with cinnamon and sometimes vanilla—to empanadas, corn, or tamales.
Sheets of plastic have also been temporarily attached to keep the rain out. Rain or shine you can always find the local food vendors here. They are mostly one-manned operations—though the majority on the block is women—often keeping their product in a giant orange Igloo brand cooler to keep the heat from escaping.
“I sell only cheese, meat or chicken,” says Borzola as he expertly rolls the dough to make another empanada, “the meat is the best.”
Borzola typically works two or three days a week selling empanadas. He has his own portable stand complete with a miniature grill. It’s been five years since he began selling part time a few days a week in Bushwick for additional income. Originally from Ecuador, he now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three sons.
“They are so good, and so cheap,” says an older female customer, simply known as Dexy.
Dexy wears thick eyeliner that encircles both eyes. When she glances around and fixates on something intently she looks like a cat ready to pounce. She too is from Ecuador, and has lived in the United States for 30 years. She has come to Borzola for three of them, and eats in the neighborhood daily.
According to Dexy most of the vendors on this block have emigrated from Central and Southern Latin Americans countries. Dexy points to one of the stands across the street selling ceviche—a raw seafood dish marinated in citric juice—and systematically, moving counterclockwise—names each nationality ending with the woman selling chicken next to Borzola’s stand.
“Ecuadorian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Chilean,” she matter-of-factly ends her list as she snaps open her ringing cell phone and begins speaking Spanish rapidly.
Food peddling, especially in densely populated immigrant communities, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. In 1995, the Street Vendor Review Panel was originally established to regulate, ban, or limit peddling on certain blocks. The panel consisted of four members, including the Commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services, the Director of the Department of City Planning, the Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, and a nominated representative of the City Council.
However, there were actually too many departments, panels, and enforcing agencies already in existence assigned with the responsibility of regulating street vendors. As a result the Street Vendor Review Panel only contributed to more confusion as to whose responsibility was what, subsequently resulting in their last meeting taking place almost 10 years prior—there presence was needed, but a panel of four was largely insufficient to take over the demands currently assigned to multiple other outlets.
Historically, the issue of unregulated food peddling has been addressed since its first appearance on the Lower East Side, but never with much success. According to records kept at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, in 1934 Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was determined with organizing the open markets on Orchard St. by turning it into an indoor municipal market. He pumped large sums of federal money toward the issue, determined to “‘professionalize’ the peddlers”—meaning “even if only implicitly, at de-ethnicizing the markets.”
However, the cultural diversity of the food stands, as the result of immigration, proved to be a significant draw for customers. Following the removal of the pushcarts, it was reported Orchard St. saw a 60% decrease in business. According to the same records, “Immigrants and their families who had moved away often returned for a nostalgic trip down memory lane [while] others found the immigrant cultures interesting and exciting as well.”
Regulated or not, it hasn’t stopped food vendors from continuing their business in Bushwick. Evelia Arrata has sold corn in the neighborhood for two years. “I only come out for a little bit,” she says in Spanish, eyeing me suspiciously as she begins talking to a new customer, “but I am here daily.”
Arrata suggests the local community helps keep the local vendor’s businesses going. When compared to other major cities, Brooklyn affords the opportunity for immigrants to keep in touch with their roots in a place where others can share and take part in the experience, while being able to turn a profit.
“My friend, when she moved to Colorado she discovered she needed a car to get around anywhere,” Arrata continues her train of thought after another customer has left with a steaming cup full of corn soup. She imagines it would be hard to do what she does daily in a city where you can only get around by car, therefore making it much harder to discover neighborhoods like Knickerbocker Ave.
According to a fiscal brief filed by the New York City’s Independent Budget Office, although technically, “there are no caps on the number of food licenses that can be issued” in 2009 there were at least 5,684 interested applicants. The Department of Consumer Affairs—which handles licensing—stopped taking additional names according to the same report.
Regulation will most likely remain an issue of contention. Currently in neighboring Manhattan there are 160 blocks that reportedly abide by 160 different sets of rules, making it close to impossible for police—assigned with enforcing these rules on the streets—to properly enforce them.
Dexy begins chatting with a Chilean woman selling chicken skewers a few feet away from Borzola. They chat about their children and the abysmal weather, Borzola peeks over from behind his stand to tell them a joke about the weather.
Claudia Gatica emigrated from Chile almost 22 years ago. Since then she has worked in various places, but by far enjoys the community of the block she happened upon two years ago, when her brother-in-law began peddling food a few blocks away. “Everyone knows each other more or less,” she says of the neighborhood.
No matter how many vendors populate the strip between Dekalb St. and Harman St. it is clear the local vendors form a tight knit community within themselves—a form of compensation that cannot be calculated monetarily. “The people are always helpful here,” adds Gatica, “It’s because we see each other almost every day we are here.”
As if the temporary suspension of rain was a signal for a new wave of clientele to emerge, a noticeable rise of pedestrians begins to fill Knickerbocker Ave. The stands become immersed in chatter once again while small crowds consisting of families and others taking lunch breaks from businesses nearby drop in for a quick, inexpensive meal and conversation. Borzola and Gatica become busy again helping customers.
“I told you the meat was the best,” says Borzola to me, as he hands a family three meat empanadas.
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