It’s hard for me to relate to a perspective that sees a taco truck on every corner as a bad thing, but then I know people who will express anger at seeing one of our many usually vacant local soccer fields being used by Mexican laborers. And, for me, seeing folks out at our parks having fun with their families and kicking the ball around just makes me happy.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Depends on the prices, really. Went to the local First Friday last Friday without having eaten and interested in the food trucks. Woooo !!! High prices. Not cheap eats, by any means. Pulled pork sandwich, no side – $7. Ice cream from the State U creamery – $4/dip. At these prices, you can put a taco truck on every corner, and I will go to the restaurants.
Everything is making me grumpy today and it’s a struggle not to react like an asshole, so I went and found one of my very favorite shows and clicked on ’19’ to stream Stella Blue, and things are all better now.
I escape with ME-tv and revisit the idealized shows from my childhood. It calms my nerves.
For me it’s Korean TV shows.
Called K-Dramas.
And also Korean revenge movies.
.
I’ve gotten into some K-pop lately. Surprised the hell out of me, I’ll tell ya.
The whole culture is surprising, and fascinating as hell.
I worry about North Korea, and what they can do when they crash. Imagine having such a neighbor, completely crazy, and completely made up of……you.
.
Saw “Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang” a few months ago. Peculiar documentary about peculiar people in a peculiar culture, and the comparatively normal people who are in their orbits.
Alcohol, it’s a helluva drug.
It’s strange, but over the last couple of years I have also become fascinated by the whole North Korea thing. I have watched countless hours of online documentaries and interviews with people who escaped from there with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, often leaving behind entire families. I still cannot wrap my mind around what it must be like to be born into, and raised up, in such a culture as exists there.
It’s often been Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episodes and old television commercials and musical performances for me lately. That, and excerpts from Stephen Colbert, Chris Hayes and other favored programs that I’ve missed due to work, play or sleep.
I tend to head to Estimated Prophet first when it’s offered on a show recording. They did a nice version that night; thanks for sharing.
the GD are always good for what ails me. from that era, maybe Music Never Stopped. That particular show is also a favorite of mine, partly because of the comedy routine they opened with.
“our short term memory isn’t all it could be, but we can hold a grudge”
– B Weir
Women in my area on Trump.
Glad to see them embarking on a 12-step program. It’s going to take that for some GOP-addicts.
I’m hoping for a margarita truck on every corner as well.
For some reason soccer drives the xenophobes mad. They perceive it as un-American, a foreign interloper played by effete (and you know damned well what they mean by that) Europeans and dirty immigrants.
But haven’t heard of them whinging about ‘taco trucks’ in particular save for some generalized whinging about ‘goddam hipsters and their fancy food trucks’ . Maybe I’m just too steeped in Southern AZ culture, even the bigots like Mexican food here…
There are some people who can never be truly happy until everyone is as miserable as they are.
Me I’m all #ElectionDayIsTacoTuesday!
Sans the ‘gay darkies’ stuff I too loathe soccer.
Just wait until they learn about falafel stands and halal butchers.
The whole idea of food trucks originated to serve construction work sites for lunch. Now, an organization can’t have an event without seeing if they have enough attendance to draw a food truck — at least one.
And the barbecue joints here do them too.
Trucks are pricey to operate; the food is therefore also pricey.
Creeping sharia! They put it in your pita!
A doner kebab. Closest thing to heaven there is.
Every Saturday at the farmer’s market I hit the taco truck and the coffee stand for a nitro cold brew. Send all the taco trucks down here to South Carolina, please.
Really, talk about terrible surrogates. Giulliani, Carson, Christie…his spokeswoman.
Yeah, Katrina Pierson’s a piece of work:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/12-craziest-things-about-trumps-spokeswoman-katrina-pierson
She’s piled up a number of offenses since this piece was written in January.
Pierson claims she voted for Obama in 2008. Given her enthusiastic wingnuttery, it is unsurprising to discover that a big part of what set her against the President “…was Obama’s refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin.”
I didn’t know she ran against a member of GOP House leadership in 2014. Got crushed, of course:
https://ballotpedia.org/Katrina_Pierson
The collection of tweets at the bottom show the wingnut in developmental form. Her idolatry for Malcolm X makes sense if you think about it, and if she doesn’t.
Telegraph —Revolution against ‘rich parasites’ at utopian Burning Man Festival as ‘hooligans’ attack luxury camp
How fitting — nouveau riche libertarians invade Burning Man and encounter ‘hooligans.’
>>It is supposed to be a utopian vision of peace and love
bleah. please. the torygraph is proving that it’s 8000 miles away from what it’s reporting.
Burning Man is weird and interesting and I’m not aware of anything else like it on earth. but i don’t think anyone who’s been there talks about utopian visions, once the drugs wear off. [i have several friends who are there now and a couple dozen other friends who have been]
I also hated the sfgate story, but that’s just because of the headline “Vandals just decimated Burning Man’s ‘fancy camp'”. They need an editor smart enough to look up “decimated”.
You’re correct. There probably isn’t “anything else like it on earth,” and it’s too weird to frame it as an updated hippie festival. Personally, I can’t imagine anything less interesting than an ugly desert campground with mobs of drugged out faux libertarians building stuff to burn down.
“don’t try to describe the ocean if you’ve never seen it” – J Buffett.
personally, I think it’s very interesting, but that’s not the same as wanting to spend a week out there.
I did say “personally.” Dislike deserts and crowds (the reason why I passed on going with friends to Altamont). Having seen the ocean, I would imagine that someone could describe much of it from pictures and videos.
I also dislike deserts and crowds. But Burning Man is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. Those who haven’t gone just can’t imagine what it is.
Feel free to describe why it was so amazing and so totally unimaginable to those that haven’t attended.
Well I would not enjoy it being a hispanic non-white who dislikes tacos.
More importantly you want to read this.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/new-opioid-douses-pain-without-being-addictive-or-deadly-in-p
rimates/
The food trucks around here are kind of shit. I’ll take a taco truck any day.
I have to say, I am always taken off guard a bit around here when someone starts ranting about bilingual signs in the bank, or P.A announcements in stores which are given in English and then Spanish, or the P&G products in the grocery that have bilingual labels. Four or five years ago my dad made a mini-scene in a local bank when he went in to cancel all his accounts because the bank had posted a note informing customers that they always had at least one teller on duty who could speak Spanish.
I have often wondered how in the hell I grew up in the same community as all these people, yet I am apparently completely oblivious to this horrific brown-skinned Latino hoard that they see smothering their, and I guess my, precious way of life. I guess I must have never really embraced, anywhere along the way, this whole precept that without a full-fledged militant embrace of my privileged white upbringing could I enjoy the full measure of its advantages.
I imagine a lot if has to do with the fact that I have been fortunate, in my almost 60 years of living, to travel a bit outside the safe confines of my 97% white community, experience some different cultures, work with a variety of foreign born people and have an opportunity to partake of the offerings at more than a few metaphorical taco trucks along the way.
I do try to listen, understand and be empathetic to this visceral fear that grips so many people I know. But I think I am sometimes, by my nature, maybe too rational a person. And I simply cannot come to terms that what they are feeling has any foundational basis in reason. Mainly because it doesn’t. It is primal. It is tribal. And it is rooted in the deep recesses of the reptilian portion of their brains. So I am left to simply stand on the outside of their fears, peering in, in puzzled bemusement, at whatever the fuck it is that riles them so about these goddamned taco trucks.
Yes, some of you probably heard about the big snit a few years ago when a high school valedictorian in California wanted to deliver his speech in Spanish. You would have thought the sky was falling the way some people freaked out about it.
Personally I have the deranged idea that foreign languages should be required in primary school. Kids at that age soak up languages without even trying, and there are all kinds of advantage in being multilingual. Why, you even understand the English language better if you’ve studied other ones!
I took four years of Spanish in high school. My senior year I was a Spanish teacher’s aide, helping with and tutoring Freshman and Sophomore students. I spent part of a summer in Mexico during that time. I developed a pretty good proficiency in the language. Unfortunately, after high school I didn’t continue to utilize my Spanish. I did retain enough to where I did some document translations twenty years ago for my employer at the time. It’s now been over forty years since I have used it on a regular basis, and though I can still read enough to get the gist of things, the spoken langruage now mostly eludes me. It is one of my highest regrets that I didn’t maintain my skills. I still sometimes surprise myself at how much I do remember, and I could probably re-immerse myself, if I had the time, and at least get back to where I could be somewhat conversational.
for me a “taco truck” is the same truck that can serve every kind of good food you can think of. Back in the 1980s they were generally called the “roach coach”; the world of food trucks has changed since then.
didn’t anyone else here see the movie Chef a couple years ago? Bring me his Cubano sandwiches, please!
there are at least 3 trucks that park regularly within a couple miles of me; I should check out their food. I think all are Mexican. One of them has invested money in excellent artwork on the side of the truck. Here in Silicon Valley, there are plenty of non-Mexican trucks, especially Indian.
I once saw a taco truck that played “La Cucaracha” when they blew the horn. I wondered if they’d really thought about that.