The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City

by Robert Lemon

Overview

Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America's melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a public street corner into a bustling business.

Drawing on interviews with taco truck workers and his own skills as a geographer, Robert Lemon illuminates new truths about foodways, community, and the unexpected places where ethnicity, class, and culture meet. Lemon focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Columbus, Ohio, to show how the arrival of taco trucks challenge preconceived ideas of urban planning even as cities use them to reinvent whole neighborhoods. As Lemon charts the relationships between food practices and city spaces, he uncovers the many ways residents and politicians alike contest, celebrate, and influence not only where your favorite truck parks, but what's on the menu.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252084232
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/16/2019
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,110,317
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Robert Lemon is an urban and social researcher in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas Austin, and an urban and social researcher and documentary filmmaker. His films include Transfusión.

Table of Contents

Foreword Jeffrey M. Pilcher ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Engaging Taco Truck Space 1

1 Remaking Oakland's Streets 19

2 Formalizing San Francisco's Informal Street Food Vendors 38

3 Making Sacramento into an Edible City 57

4 Landscape, Labor, and the Lonchera 77

5 Community Conflict and Cuisine in Columbus 103

6 Cooking Up Multiculturalism 125

7 Food, Fear, and Dreams 144

Conclusion: An Evolving American Space 167

Notes 177

References 185

Index 195

Color plates follow page 56

Editorial Reviews

John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, American Association of Geographers, 2020

"A compelling examination . . . Lemon's work provides a much-needed scholarly overview of the proliferation of food trucks in the 21st century." —Great Plains Research

"A fantastic book. I was repeatedly surprised by the numerous ways the author credibly links the act of mobile food vending to some of North America's most poignant contemporary issues of cultural identity. The mix of interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis is a perfect fit for exploring the themes."—Joshua Long, author of Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas

"Overall this was truly a fascinating book. . . .Very much recommended reading." —BookAnon.com: Confessions of a Bookaholic

"Folklorists interested in culinary tourism will find aspects of this study good food for thought." —Journal of Folklore Research

"The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City (2019) by Robert Lemon is sure to become a formative text in the expanding body of work on the relationship between culinary entrepreneurship and local city ordinances." —H-Environment

"Overall this was truly a fascinating book. . . .Very much recommended reading." —BookAnon.com: Confessions of a Bookaholic

From the Publisher