Taco Trucks, June 2, 2021 @ 7 PM via Zoom

Chicago Foodways Roundtable

Taco Trucks
How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the
American City



Robert Lemon,
Author, Geographer, Documentary Film Maker

Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at 7:00 PM Central Time

Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America's melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a public street corner into a bustling business.

Drawing on interviews with taco truck workers and his own skills as a geographer, Robert Lemon illuminates new truths about foodways, community, and the unexpected places where ethnicity, class, and culture meet. Lemon focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Columbus, Ohio, to show how the arrival of taco trucks challenge preconceived ideas of urban planning even as cities use them to reinvent whole neighborhoods. As Lemon charts the relationships between food practices and city spaces, he uncovers the many ways residents and politicians alike contest, celebrate, and influence not only where your favorite truck parks, but what's on the menu.

Robert Lemon is an urban and social researcher in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas Austin, and an urban and social researcher and documentary filmmaker. His films include Transfusión.

Please e-mail Culinary.Historians@gmail.com for the zoom link.

http://www.CulinaryHistorians.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zebLFVKcNjo

Podcast on Taco Trucks: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City

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From 2008 until mid-2013, Culinary Historians programs were recorded by WBEZ via Chicago Amplified. Since then, we have recorded our programs hosted on soundcloud.

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These run the length of an introduction plus presentation with questions, but no food samples for anyone until we meet in person once more.