July 31, 2003
Time and Location
In response to (one) overwhelming comment question about the cart's operating hours and location by a person I don't talk to weekly on the telephone, and seeing as the cart information page I am trying to put up at Red Chef HQ is delayed, and just in case anyone else wants to know, here it is:
For the forseeable future, I will operate my foodcart, barring nasty weather, on the corner of Stanton and Ludlow from 11 PM to 4 AM or later on Fridays and Saturdays.
Posted by Sam on
01:40 AM
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July 25, 2003
Pry me loose
There have been a lot of developments in the pushcart project. Some of the initial adrenaline has worn off, and I am starting to understand what the week-in, week-out realities of the cart are going to be. I've also started wanting to have a life again: some time to relax, some time with my friends, some time to do other things, some time free from grinding worry about every detail of the food-cart.
And this week, for the first time in months, I have gotten a very sweet taste. Molly and my buddy Alan celebrated their birthdays, which made a good excuse. Work has been bullying my life for a while now, so I thought I would let life bully work. Listen up, New York!
But really, the cart is coming into its own. I am slowly losing the feeling that it only exists in my imagination, and that if I forget to think about it for even a second it might disappear. I have regular customers who come back with friends. My friends come by and make things happy (thanks Al, Ritu, Jeremy, Dave). I am learning how I like to feel out on the street, and starting to understand how I am going to keep the cart developing without having it be my everthing and all-the-time. Because it can't be, despite how it seemed, and was, at moments.
Reality just keeps prying me loose and making me listen.
Posted by Sam on
12:48 AM
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Comments (1)
July 23, 2003
Shipping Container Building
a nice container pic from www.shearman.com/enterprise/container.html
Me, Molly, and Jeremy have a dream to build an urban trailer park. We thought about building it out of shipping containers. Then I came across this post in Beyond Brilliance about...an architect who designs buildings made out of shipping containers. It ain't an urban trailer park, but it's nice to be reminded that other people live on the same planet as us, or at least on a nearby planet that we might be able to visit someday.
Posted by Sam on
12:29 AM
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Comments (2)
July 12, 2003
It works
Tonight I SOLD OUT of food.
Total take: $58.50
New theory: July 5th was a lousy day to sell food.
I prepped light (only 12 orders of BBQ), but even so...
It works. I was ready for another fuckeroo of a fight. I was ready for a struggle as hard as the struggle with the city. I did not know the future; I was conserving energy. The prep today dragged. But now...
Mao contemplates the new dawn
But now it works. I sold food. I cooked. I cook. I am a cook again. Finally. I have been a businessman, and I was ready to be a marketer, but now I get to be a cook.
People liked my food. People came back for more. I sold out. I could not possibly be any happier.
Posted by Sam on
06:27 AM
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Comments (3)
July 10, 2003
Repetition
Yesterday I was in a kind of funk, thinking: "Why the hell did I ever get into this line of work? Every day I want to go out I have to do everything all over again. If I worked with information, like if I was a writer or a music producer, I could just do it once and be done with it."
But today something Molly said helped me see the other side of the coin. I was telling her about how disappointed I was with the new MF Doom album. "It's got to be hard for guys like that," she said, "I mean, some people can spend every day for nine months working on a song until they know they can't make it any better. But for someone who wants to get the stuff out there and see how people like it, there's no real way to repeat it. There's nothing like there is for you with the cart, where you get to do it again and again until it's just the way you want it."
It made me think about an El-P interview I read, where he said that he "spent a lot of days in a warm bath with a razor blade" in his hand when he was agonizing over his album. It put my anxiety in perspective. I get to go out with my best game, and if it doesn't work for people, I get to try something else tomorrow. It's hard to feel like I'm bringing something good enough, but I get an immediate response and have an immediate remedy. The tough part is not over-reacting, is having the fortitude to stand up and wait for people to tell you what they want. I'm working on it...
Posted by Sam on
10:49 PM
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Debut
So the cart is out. July 5th was the first night, and I went out to the corner of Ludlow and Stanton. We (I had help from Mol and my Mom) got the cart there by 11 or so, and I called it a night at about 2:45.
I felt pretty good out there, and there was a fair amount of interest, but I didn't actually succeed in selling anything. Not one single thing. A lot of people commented on the cart (though mostly not to me), saying things like "Oh, cute!" and "look!" One asain woman thought it was "hilarious" that I was selling Korean-style barbeque. Two people asked for hot dogs. But no sales.
Looking back on it, I guess I kinda had to believe that once I got out on the street there would be some sort of explosion, an immediate apprehension of what I was trying to do, an instantaneous understanding of how food-carts can build urban culture and enchant the urban landscape. I had to believe this just to put in the effort it took to get through the regulatory process with the city, and to have the strength of conviction it took to persuade my parents to lend me the money, and to keep in mind the hope I have for our city and the trust in my fellow New Yorkers. At the same time, it was wildly optimistic. Life is a gradual release from ignorance, and like so many unexamined assumptions we hold in our minds, this belief was useful as a placeholder, but can now be usefully discarded.
Like every other part of this project, it looks like building a market for the foodcart is going to be a struggle...OK. "It is what it is" -- this phrase is getting a lot of use these days.
Accentuating the positive, the technical difficulties have been steadily yeilding to our problem-solving abilities. The equipment was much more difficult (and less fun) to get a hold of than we originally thought, but we have finally gotten most of what I will need. We went out for a test on the 2nd of July, and technically it was a little...ahem...rocky. We are very lucky we had Jeremy to help us bring our materials down to the lot, because although we had the foresight to get a hand-truck (and a nifty folding one, at that) , we had a very murky idea as to how were were going to put the stuff on the hand-truck. We thought it would just sort of, well, go on. But collections of oddly-shaped items in plastic shopping bags do not stack at the best of times, let alone on a bumping, jerking hand-truck. We have since bought a large plastic tub to put the heavier stuff in, and a styrofoam cooler to put the meat in. It works much better.
I took the cart out for the second night at an experimental location on Avenue A between 7th and 8th streets, this time with more signage and a few hot dogs. Other than a slight altercation with a guy at the news-stand, who didn't want me to park on "his" sidewalk, resolved by a 10 yard move down the avenue, and some minor friction with some guy who insisted I had "big balls" parking near the Odessa Restaurant because "they pay taxes," it went pretty good. I made a few sales totalling $16, and this was on a Tuesday! But it is a long way to push the cart.
That is all I have to report so far...I am still processing the emotions of this as opposed to other jobs I have had, but I need more input to really make anything more than guesses. I am going out again on tomorrow (Friday the 11th) at the Ludlow/Stanton intersection. I will try to get to the location by 10 or 11, and stay until 4 or 4:30. More dates, more data..
Posted by Sam on
10:47 PM
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July 04, 2003
Happy 4th!
Posted by Sam on
11:36 PM
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