As you can tell from the poll on our homepage (please take a second to vote if you haven’t already 🙂 , I am a bit of a fan of street vendors, illegal or otherwise since legal and illegal can vary quite a bit depending on what country you are in. I would love to sell some food in the park, so I listen and my eyes glimmer with bright green envy when I hear people tell their tales. I have made a deal with a vibrant lass from New Zealand here in Vancouver to start up a underground restaurant, so we will keep you all posted on that, but in the meantime I would like to share this experience a friend had in Portland with her curbside cuisine

Portland is really a leader in the transition town-type movements and could easily leave us all in her dust. San Francisco is also doing amazingly well with their underground cuisine including the pizzahacker who sometimes forages the ingredients for his fabulous pizzas. All over the place underground restaurants are popping up, much as they have in Cuba. You can’t stop people from cooking and eating no matter how hard you try!

I pass on this to you as is, many of us are trying to figure out how to get by and pay absurd debts…and, seriously people, in this day and age can anyone dare say pie is illegal in the US of A? Surely this is the most un-American thing to do of all.

We have this thing in my neighborhood called Last Thursday. It is an art thing but mostly looks like a carnival with people selling things, art and jewellery and such, and eating fire and playing music. I went up there not even concerned that a health inspector would be around to bust me for selling pie. But, it happened. I have no business license or food handlers card. Basically if I had the food handlers card and a connection to a commercial kitchen it wouldn’t have mattered. My home kitchen can’t pass inspection cause I have a cat and my kitchen has no doors to keep him out.

The Inspectors didn’t ticket me or anything but they told me to close it up. And then walked up the street to bust everyone for their baked goods. As they walked off someone asked, “Ohh what kind of pie is that? Is that rhubarb custard?” So I sold almost all my pie while keeping a weather eye open, looking out for the man.

I am not sure if they come every last Thursday but I took June off. I don’t know what the repercussions are if I get caught again. And my intention is to get a business license and food handlers card and I don’t want to do anything that somehow makes that anymore difficult than it seems right now. The commercial kitchen is more involved. I would basically make no money if I rent a kitchen even for a day to cook.

So now, I am back on trying to get someone who wants to buy my pie whose kitchen I can use. The fantasy is an ice cream truck that I can bake and sell pie from. Food-carts are going crazy down here. They are the dream of many an office worker trying to escape the cube. I have been talking to a lot of food cart peeps. Sounds like $20,000 would do the trick, roughly. I got it all figured. But I have no money and have filed bankruptcy so no bank is gonna give me dollars. So, I keep my day job, try really hard to push my pie, get my business name registered quick before someone takes it, food handlers card. And then put all I make in a savings account until it can happen.

And that Lady is where it is at. Like I said I am not sure what help that provides to anyone. But I got to escape this office life I have typecast myself into. I have to use my hands for more than keystrokes. And so it goes.

Keep fighting the good fight.

With all the World Cup excitement of late, I keep dreaming of how to tap into that energy and put it into competing for something that can really make a difference for our earth. As a result, I have been thinking about an idea I began to develop with the publisher of Far West Almanac. We suggested setting up an inter-city “who has the best DIY culture/movement” challenge. Have a look at the original article here. And please feel free to give any comments or feedback. Maybe there is some way to further develop this idea.

We love to hear your experiences as well!