Monday, August 27, 2007

Brooklinks: Monday Back End Edition

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I honestly don't understand things like that post from Lost City. The implication is that the DOH has it in for the Red Hook vendors because they're Latino, right? Give me a friggin' break! Embracing that kind of conspiracy theory thinking is completely absurd. Even Cesar Fuentes recently acknowledged that the DOH has been doing its best to accomodate the vendors over the last few months until something can be worked out. This is a significant operation, folks - it's not mom & pop selling brownies and lemonade from the tailgate of an old station wagon.

So let's review the possible reasons the DOH is chasing after the RH vendors. Is it...

...that - in a very public case, in a city that's almost 30% Latino and over 35% foreign born - the nefarious career bureaucrats over at the DOH are gunning for the food vendors at the soccer field vendors out of some kind of anti-arepa animus...

...Or would it be much more logical to assume that, due to the success of the vendors (especially among the hipsters and foodies who suddenly "found" this "authentic" ethnic experience after 30-something years), the operation has become substantial enough that a city agency actually requires the participants to, say, follow the law?

Hmmm... which might it be?

The very idea that these vendors deserve special consideration, or that they somehow need to be "saved" by a bunch of self-important writers, bloggers, and would-be gourmands is insulting, demeaning, and probably racist - a blatant example of "privileging the other."

These enterprises survived for a long, long time before the wealthy white folks "discovered" them, largely due to the hard work and ingenuity of the people behind them. I know, I know, it's hard for the Park Slopers and Williamsburgers to fathom, but the vendors will probably still exist (in one form or another) long after all everyone's shifted their attention to Jackson Heights or East Flatbush or wherever the next trendy cuisine cooked up by brown-skinned people happens to be "discovered."

7:16 PM  

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