Staten Island, the tourists aren't going to warm up to you if you keep shooting down the things the rest of the city is embracing! And yet here we are, learning that the borough which semi-successfully protested bike lanes is now worrying it has caught the food truck plague. Street meat! The horror!
"They sprouted up all over Staten Island," said Tony Cosentino, a member of Community Board 1, complained to DNAinfo of the carts. "They create problems in all the parking lots. They kind of exacerbate the situation."
And it is true, they have definitely been appearing more in the borough. The number of food carts licensed to work Status Island has boomed in the past year from 14 in 2011 to 36 now. And Richmond County—which apparently missed it when this happened in the rest of the city—is not amused. What is adorable is the way in which Staten Islanders, including the Borough President, are innocently repeating the same arguments that other New Yorkers have tried to make against the carts for ages. "They park on the sidewalks—that's an obstruction," complained SI Beep James Molinaro to the Advance. "Think of the storekeepers paying rent, paying taxes. It's not fair to the business owner."
The thing is, the Health Department's Mobile Food Vending permits actually do allow carts to be located anywhere (as long as they are within health code regulations). And, as much as local Business Improvement Districts try, it is hard to prove that street vendors actually hurt brick and mortar businesses. As for taking up parking spaces/making parking lot confusion? #SIProblems.
