Food Bill Is Hard to Swallow

By [Dan Rivoli] Is the Upper East Side at war with street food vendors? First, vendors complained about Council Member Dan Garodnick"s bill that would require them to post letter grades from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Now, Council Member Jessica Lappin wants vendors" licenses revoked if they get three parking tickets in a year. Food truck vendors, who represent a relatively new trend in New York"s street food history, feel singled out. â??Like a lot of businesses that require vehicles, sometimes vehicles get parking violations, especially in New York City, said Sean Basinski, director of the Urban Justice Center"s Street Vendor Project. â??Imagine singling out plumbing vans. People would say this is ridiculous. Food vendor trucks are fighting back, too. Frites â??N" Meats, a truck that serves gourmet hamburgers and fries, is using its Twitter feed to round up opposition to the parking ticket bill. Owner Vadim Ponorovsky wondered why Upper East Side Council members are going after trucks that mainly populate Midtown and lower Manhattan. â??In fact, we don"t know anyone that goes to the Upper East Side past 57th Street, Ponorovsky said, adding a rib to the neighborhood, â??[The Upper East Side] is not a part of the city that is at the forefront of really anything. It"s staid, it"s conservative. The law should apply uniformly and not target a specific kind of business" vehicle, he said. â??If this law is really applied across the board, there should be no more UPS trucks in this city, there should be no more Fed Ex trucks in this city, and there should be no more delivery trucks in this city, Ponorovsky said. But Lappin argues that UPS and Fed Ex trucks are constantly moving, instead of some food vendors, who stay put for up to 10 hours. She thinks it would be better if food vendors parked for at most a few hours for lunch, dinner or for late night partiers. They can's and many do's use social media and blogs to let people know where they will be parked. â??We"re not calling for anyone to be banned from city streets. They should be able to park somewhere for an hour or two and make a living, Lappin said. â??These are public streets. They belong to all of us.