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H t D , H p t r , nd X n ph b : r nt tr t F d V nd r n N r Sean Basinski

Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 81, Number 2, Summer 2014, pp. 397-408 (Article)

P bl h d b Th J hn H p n n v r t Pr DOI: 10.1353/sor.2014.0028

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Sean Basinski Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia: Immigrant Street Food Vendors in New York

STREET FOOD VENDING HAS ALWAYS BEEN CLOSELY LINKED WITH NEW YORK CITY’S

status as a hub for immigrants. As early as 1641, fur pelts and fish were

traded outdoors to the first residents of New Amsterdam. In the 1800s,

before the Civil War, Irish women known as “Apple Marys” vended

apples, while German women, including many political refugees who

f led after the 1848 Revolution, were known for selling pretzels out of

baskets. The famous “hot corn girls” tempted customers with their food

and songs.

Then, in 1886, four pushcart vendors established permanent lo-

cations on Hester Street, on the Lower East Side, thereby becoming the

first modern, fixed-location street vendors (Bluestone 1991, 72). Over

the next 40 years, the great wave of immigration to the United States

from Europe, through Ellis Island, turned parts of the city into huge

outdoor markets. In 1925, the US Department of Agriculture deter-

mined that there were 31,000 vendors in New York, 90 percent of them

foreign-born (French 1925, 3). Vending provided a source of employ-

ment for new arrivals who did not have skills or could not find jobs in

the formal sector. At the same time, vendors provided cheap food that

impoverished immigrants were familiar with from their homelands.

Just as consistently throughout the history of New York, ven-

dors have been the target of anti-immigrant bias. Laws and regulations

398 social research

designed to limit vending often had nativist roots. In 1920, for exam-

ple, the Board of Alderman required “foreigners” to declare their in-

tention for US citizenship in order to receive peddling licenses (Gaber

1996, 26). Moreover, the city’s new pushcart markets were regulated to

minimize “old-world” methods in favor of modern, “American” busi-

ness practices. For example, even though many customers were ob-

servant Jews for whom Saturday was the Sabbath, markets were kept

open on Saturdays but officially closed on Sundays (Wasserman 1998,

335). Haggling, seen as an old-world practice, was banned.

Much the same reality exists today. After 12 years of working

with street vendors in New York on a daily basis, I am acutely aware

of how vendors and their struggles are shaped by their status as immi-

grants. I estimate that 98 percent of today’s New York street food ven-

dors are immigrants. While most vendors at the turn of the century

were Italians or Eastern European Jews, we now see food sellers hail-

ing from Bangladesh, Egypt, Mexico, Ecuador, China, and Afghanistan.

And today, just as then, opposition to street food vendors, while usu-

ally couched in neutral arguments about sidewalk congestion or “un-

fair competition,” often reflects deep-seated racism and xenophobia.

Who are today’s food vendors? They are people with entrepre-

neurism in their blood, like Jiang Chao Qun (figure 1), who sells fruits

and vegetables in Chinatown. Before immigrating to the United States

in 1992, she sold household items on the street in China’s Guangdong

province. Jiang lives with her husband and two children in Queens.

She became a member of the Street Vendor Project two years ago.

Despite their meager resources, vendors have big dreams. Mun-

nu Dewan (figure 2) immigrated to New York in 1991; he had owned

a pharmacy in his native Bangladesh. Bristling at the 14-hour days he

worked at his first restaurant job in New York, he opened a hot dog cart

in Lower Manhattan. Eighteen years later, he has saved up $27,000 to

buy a larger “American, Arabian, and Indian food” cart that he hopes

will reverse his declining frankfurter sales. Dewan, who joined the

Street Vendor Project in 2004, received a loan from our Pushcart Fund

to help expand his business.

Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia 399

Figure 1. Jiang Chao Qun. © Street Vendor Project

Figure 2. Munnu Dewan. © Street Vendor Project

400 social research

Many of the vendors, through their labor, are carrying on tradi-

tions from their home countries. When Margarita Villegas (figure 3)

first came to New York in 1998, she worked as a machine operator in a

clothing factory in the Bronx. After the factory closed, she began sell-

ing tamales (which her grandmother taught her to make in Morelos,

Mexico) on the streets near her apartment in East Harlem. Margarita,

a Street Vendor Project member since 2008, is preserving the culture

of a largely Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrant neighborhood where

Subway and Taco Bell have recently opened stores.

The Street Vendor Project is a workers’ center I founded with

a $15,000 grant from Yale Law School in 2001. SVP provides legal and

small business services to our members while organizing vendors to

amplify their voices so as to increase their collective power in our city.

We are structured democratically, with a leadership board of experi-

enced vendors who are elected each year by the general membership.

The Board makes all major decisions about the direction of SVP and

drives our campaigns. They work closely with our staff, which in addi-

tion to myself currently includes an attorney, a community organizer,

a development manager, and the manager of the Vendy Awards, our

annual street food event series.

While the diversity of our members presents many challenges,

we take great pride in our community’s immigrant roots. Over 90

percent of our nearly 2,000 members (who include nonfood vendors,

such as those who sell T-shirts, sunglasses, etc.) are foreign born; they

hail from more than 20 countries. In addition to Veterans Day and the

Fourth of July, we celebrate Ramadan, Lunar New Year, and the Feast

of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Our office is decorated with tchotchkes our

members have brought back from their home countries, which they

frequently visit during the cold winter months. Before our monthly

meetings (which we conduct via simultaneously translation in Eng-

lish, Spanish, Bangladeshi, Wolof, Mandarin, and Arabic) we often

share tamales, biryiani, and kushari.

Many of our primary activities flow from our members’ status as

immigrants. When members first join, for example, we provide them

Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia 401

with training on the voluminous rules that regulate the minutiae of

their daily activities. Vendors are perhaps the most heavily regulated

businesses in the city and enforcement is strict, with fines steep: as

high as $1,000 per violation. However, the city licensing authorities

have made no effort to translate the rules into languages that vendors

understand.1 Instead, the city distributes a photocopied packet of pro-

visions of the administrative code, in English, written in dense and an-

tiquated legalese. Seeing a need, SVP created an introductory legal vid-

eo, available in seven languages, which we show to all new members.

We also distribute Vendor Power, our award-winning brochure that lays out the main vending rules in an easily accessed graphic format.

Figure 3. Margarita Villegas. © Street Vendor Project

402 social research

The problems our members face as immigrants do not go away

once they learn the vending regulations. Police and health inspectors

enforce the rules through frequent sweeps, resulting in as many as

40,000 vending summonses written each year. Because many rules are

arbitrary, inspectors have wide enforcement discretion. Still, even in

a city where more than 35 percent of the population is foreign-born,

government officials rarely, if ever, communicate with vendors in any

language other than English.2 Vendors who are unable to communi-

cate with the enforcement agents cannot offer explanations that might

prevent them from being cited. In some cases, health inspectors do not

understand the traditional food the vendors sell or the techniques that

go into its preparation. Miscommunication leads to frustration and, all

too frequently, abuse. Immigrant vendors are invariably on the receiv-

ing end.

Beyond language and cultural barriers, the lives of vendors are

affected by an anti-immigrant bias that exists deep within the sys-

tem and that determines which rules exist and against whom they

are enforced. Because few vendors are naturalized citizens with the

power to vote, city legislators have passed laws limiting permits, re-

stricting streets, and raising fines, and all without suffering political

consequences. The existence of these rules is largely a function of civic

participation. Moreover, two recent SVP case studies demonstrate that

anti-immigrant rhetoric drives enforcement today just as it did a cen-

tury ago.

The first is the case of the Forsyth Street Market. In 2011, after

receiving complaints from our members, SVP found a large number

of tickets were being written to fruit and vegetable vendors on a two-

block stretch of Forsyth Street in Chinatown. These vendors, chased

out of more desirable locations years before, set up shop on a formerly

desolate stretch of pavement along the base of the Manhattan Bridge.

Over time, they built a reputation for providing high-quality produce

to Asian immigrant customers at rock-bottom prices.

We discovered, through a Freedom of Information Act request,

that an outrageously high 949 tickets were written to Forsyth Street

Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia 403

vendors the prior two years—on average, more than 1 ticket per day.

Why so many? Over time, with its success, the Forsyth Street Market

became a target of the local community board, whose district man-

ager claimed the vendors were improperly disposing of their garbage

at the end of each day. The same manager, an elderly white woman,

had previously convened a “rat summit” to discuss vermin prevention

issues throughout the neighborhood. She urged the local New York

City Police Department precinct to increase enforcement at Forsyth

Street. The precinct commander agreed, stating in thinly veiled racial

language that the market “looked like a zoo” (Hedlund 2011).

An analysis of the tickets, however, raised serious questions

about why the vendors were really being targeted. While the commu-

nity board manager complained about sanitation, only a few sanita-

tion code summonses were even issued. Instead, half the tickets were

written for a single infraction: vending while “failing to have all items

in or under” the pushcart, a violation of Section 17–315(c) of the Ad-

ministrative Code. In fact, with their low profit margins and high vol-

umes, many Forsyth Street vendors had developed the habit of stack-

ing boxes and crates of merchandise next to their carts.

If anyone other than the community board manager was com-

plaining, however, it wasn’t the customers, many of whom travel from

around the region to purchase produce from those very crates. The

rationale for Section 17–315(c)—to prevent pedestrian congestion on

the sidewalk—seemed moot at a market where everyone present was

there either to buy or sell produce! Citations for vendors failing to

“conspicuously display” their vending licenses, the second most com-

mon ticket on Forsyth Street, seemed equally pretextual.3

A comparison with a similar, nonimmigrant market reinforced

our suspicion that it was not any particular conduct that mattered

but rather who was engaging in it. Just a few miles away, at the Union

Square Greenmarket, produce vendors routinely vend from boxes and

crates, just as on Forsyth Street (see figures 4a, 4b). However, the Union

Square vendors are primarily white farmers from upstate who sell to

an upscale, nonimmigrant clientele that includes celebrity chefs like

404 social research

Figures 4a (top) and 4b (bottom). Crates on Forsyth Sreet (top) and Union Square (bottom). © Street Vendor Project.

Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia 405

Danny Meyer. The Department of Agriculture, which has jurisdiction

over the market, is more concerned with promoting locally grown

food than enforcing technical rules. As a result, according to the Agri-

culture Department spokeswoman, no more than a handful of tickets

are written at Union Square each year, and none to fruit and vegetable

vendors.4

Anti-immigrant bias can also be observed in how traditional im-

migrant vendors are treated differently from the nonimmigrant food

truck owners who have become fashionable in recent years. The rising

popularity of these upscale trucks has been well documented in popular

and “foodie” culture. Several SVP members own such trucks; we wel-

come them into our community and celebrate their creativity. In fact,

the Vendy Awards, our yearly cook-off that determines the city’s best

street chefs while raising money to fund our work, has helped encour-

age many entrepreneurs to enter the business. Many food truck owners

participate, generously donating their food to support our cause.

The division between the traditional carts and the new trucks

is sometimes overstated. In fact, branded food trucks are nothing new.

In the 1920s, Harry Burt founded Good Humor, which grew to a fleet

of 5,000 ice cream trucks operating up and down the East Coast. And

New York trucks with savory fare, such as Super Tacos on the Up-

per West Side and Yvonne’s Jamaican on the Upper East, have quietly

served their communities for decades. Moreover, some of the most

popular branded food trucks, such as Schnitzel & Things, are owned

by immigrants—if better educated immigrants, with greater access to

capital, financial and otherwise.

A few food truck owners intentionally emphasize how they are

different from immigrant vendors, as if they constituted a separate

industry. Others understand that, to the contrary, their own existence

is owed to generations of vendors who have gone before them. Either

way, the presence of the newer trucks, with their Twitter accounts,

logos, and slick branding, has opened a divide in the public conscious-

ness between them and their immigrant counterparts—to the detri-

ment of the immigrant vendors. For example, a New York Times article

406 social research

entitled “Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart” generated considerable atten-

tion in foodie circles (Moskin 2009). It described a team of upscale cup-

cake vendors who were “threatened at the depot where they park the

truck, cursed by a gyro vendor who said he would set their truck on

fire, [and] told to stay off every corner in Midtown by ice cream truck

drivers.” While SVP actively discourages such attempts to divide our

community, food writers find the “old vs. new” story line irresistible.

Moreover, the branded food truck movement has given ammu-

nition to racist and anti-immigrant voices in the debate about vend-

ing in public space. In 2012, the 34th Street Partnership, a powerful

Business Improvement District (BID), launched an unprovoked attack

against immigrant food vendors on the cover of AM New York, a daily newspaper. The BID’s president maligned vendors’ character by calling

them “terrible citizens” who “litter with impunity” (Beja 2012). Echo-

ing anti-vendor rhetoric from a century ago, he said the carts were

“ugly” and “unsightly.”5 He asked the city to be more discriminatory

in which carts it allows, pointing to Wafels & Dinges, the highly re-

garded and conspicuously branded Belgian waffle truck, as an ideal.

In this manner, an upscale truck was explicitly used by a prominent

adversary of vendors in a xenophobic campaign to marginalize immi-

grant vendors.

Racist and xenophobic attacks against vendors as immigrants are therefore present today, just as they have been throughout the history

of New York. Immigration and street vending continue to go hand in

hand. While a few native-born food truck owners have recently gained

high profiles, vending remains a physically strenuous form of low-in-

come self-employment that is accessible to those with few language

skills or formal sector credentials. The overwhelming majority of ven-

dors will therefore continue to be immigrants for the foreseeable fu-

ture—perhaps for as long as that large statue stands on Liberty Island,

beckoning newcomers. At the Street Vendor Project, we will continue

to celebrate the diversity of New York, as reflected by the thousands

of individuals who sell food on our streets. And we will continue to

organize vendors to ensure that their voices are heard in the vibrant

and cosmopolitan city that they call home.

Hot Dogs, Hipsters, and Xenophobia 407

NOTES 1. In fact, the city has taken a step backwards. In 1927, when a vendor

applied for a permit with the Department of Public Markets, she or he

received a copy of the rules and regulations in English, Yiddish, and

Italian.

2. Even government officials with foreign language skills do not use

them. In June, 2013, the New York City Police Department was

reported to have reprimanded police officers for speaking Spanish

on the job. See http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-cops-

reprimanded-speaking-spanish-article-1.1382538.

3. It should be noted that all vendors who are cited for failing to conspic-

uously display their licenses do in fact possess valid licenses and do

have them in their possession. However, vendors sometimes leave

their licenses in their pockets or, during cold weather, tuck them

inside their jackets, thereby violating the rule.

4. Greenmarket vendors also sell more hazardous fare, including meats

and cheeses. In 2011, after cheese vendors at the Greenmarket were

cited for not having hot running water and three-basin sinks—and

the vendors complained—the Department of Agriculture decided

to exempt the vendors from the health regulation. See http://www.

dnainfo.com/new-york/20110709/downtown/vendors-slicing-their-

cheese-again-union-square.

5. The branding of immigrants as “dirty” or “ugly” is a racist usage

famously employed by Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio as recently as

2012.

REFERENCES Beja, Mark. 2012. “City Should Boot ‘Ugly’ Food Carts in Midtown, Business

Group Says.” AM New York, March 4. Bluestone, Daniel. 1991. “The Pushcart Evil.” Journal of Urban History 18 (1):

68–92.

French, Early R. 1925. “Push Cart Markets in New York City.” United States

Department of Agriculture.

408 social research

Gaber, John. 1996. “The Changing Socio-Economic Role of New York

City Street Vending: A Historical Account of New York City Street

Peddling from 1863 to 1993,” delivered at Urban Affairs Association

Annual Meeting, New York, New York.

Hedlund, Patrick. 2011. “Food Fight Erupts Over Popular Chinatown

Greenmarket.” DNA Info, July 21. http://www.dnainfo.com/new- york/20110721/lower-east-side-east-village/food-fight-erupts-over-

popular-chinatown-greenmarket.

Moskin, Julia. 2009. “Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart.” New York Times, June 30.

Wasserman, Suzanne. 1998. “The Good Old Days of Poverty: Merchants

and the Battle Over Pushcart Peddling on the Lower East Side.”

Business and Economic History 27 (2): 330–339.

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