The Vendor Vision Program by Urban Parsons

THE VENDORS VISION PROGRAM

Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending Jessica Kisner + Bonnie Netel Thesis presented to the Faculty of the School of Design Strategies Parsons The New School for Design In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Science of Design and Urban Ecologies Project Partnership with: Rafael Samanez, Vamos Unidos Academic Advisors: Miguel Robles-Duran Miodrag Mitrosinovic Special Thanks to: Quilian Riano Beatriz Beckford Jonathan Lapalme Sabrina Dorsainvil Gabrielle Andersen Andrew Tucker Cristina Handal

Table of Contents 6 The Vendors Vision Project; Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

8 Supportive Concepts & Theoretical Research 11 Street Vending = Commoning

22 Project: The Vendors Vision Program

25 Manifesto: Street Food Vendors are not to be Displaced! 25 Getting into the Project

42 Reflections 44 Case Studies 50 Research & Fieldwork Methodology

26 Implementation: Staging the Object

54 Processwork & Sketches

14 Connotations of Acting in Space

30 Implementation: The Program

58 Bibliography

14 Object as Active Agent

32 Implementation: The Appropriation

13 Trust & Ritualization

16 Laws, Logistics, & Street Food 36 Implementation: The Movement & Vision Vending 38 Reflecting on Implementation (May 12, 2014) 18 Transcribing Narratives 40 Projecting the Future of the Movement

Physical Vendors Vision Program Manual Insert

The Vendors Vision Program

Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

Privatization, commodification and securitization are threatening our cities’ public spaces and the ability of people to appropriate such spaces. Specifically, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), private-public partnerships that are forming throughout the city. Business Improvement Districts lead to the disappearance of an active community, erase existing traditions and cultural manifestations and place all city decisions in the hands of consumptive enterprises (Low and Smith, 2006; Zukin, 1995). In a city like New York, such measures have had long-term social impact on cultural image. With these strong paradigms driving how these spaces are designed, few spaces exist for freedom of expression and appropriation. Currently, sixty-nine BIDs exist in the city (Neighborhood Development NYC, n.d), and this number continues to rise. The multiple voices that are

being ignored due to “abstract space” −spaces of power and profit− (Lefebvre, 1991) have created a multiplicity of strangers1 that enable the population to collectively fight for the right to the city. Essentially, public spaces are disappearing and dwindling. To be able to transform and re-imagine these existing spaces, disciplines must refocus to put people at their forefront. At Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, a community of residents, local business owners and street vendors have gathered to protest against the expansion of the Jackson-Height Corona BID, a project that strives for a “cleaner and safer” street (http://jhcoronabid.org, n.d). This group of people came together to fight for more than the beautification 1 The idea of stranger is taken from Krzysztof Wodiczko (1999) and it entails all those histories that haven’t had the opportunity to be told or heard.

Setting the stage for the Vendors Vision Program Implementation on May 12, 2014

of a street but the right to access that street for their needs. Roosevelt Avenue is a cultural diverse street where various identities live and negotiate their access to be and perform in public space. The streets vendors are crucial actors in these claims as they gather and fight to maintain for their place of work and their way of food production and preparation. This thesis project recognizes the importance of the street food vendors, not only as insurgent citizens (Holston, 1999) of different cultures and traditions, but also as political actors that helps claim and challenge existing notions and conventions of what should be done in the public space. Furthermore, street food vending occurs on the street not only to sell food but as a manifestation of larger urban challenges and concerns such as: immigration, food justice, and public space access. In short, street food vending is an act of commoning that tactically claims the street. Therefore, the street food vendor cart is the point of reflection to highlight, illustrate and question greater issues compromising today’s cities and public space. Through an object-based, programmatic and movement, The Vendors Vision Program re-imagines and expands design to a greater field of social networking and community participation. The Vendors Vision Program employs the vendor street cart as a mean to connect the consumer with the producer in ways beyond the materiality. As a mean to open spaces for dialogue and active political participation, the cart reflects social, political and economical issues. Following this train of thought the goal of The Vendors Vision Program is to open those spaces of expression in public space, to create an active citizenship and engaged community that have the tools to decide what should be done in their public space. Due to the sensitivity that surrounds the legalities of street vending practice, such as vendors that sell on the street without permits or a food vending license, The Vendors Vision Program directs its attention towards working with legally permitted vendors to visualize governmental pressures that govern this practice. However, this focus does not exclude non-permitted vendors from gaining access in the conversation but instead engages those voices as a means of representing the everyday in an understanding, conscious and respective manner. As Buchanans argues, design is directed to practical action, it “involves the vivid expression of competing ideas about social life” 8 | The Vendors Vision Program

(Buchanans, 1985:7). The cart becomes the “pluralistic expression of diverse and often conflicting ideas” that needs to be examined for their implications and their communication (Ibid. 22). In synthesis, The Vendors Vision Program challenges larger city debates and topics of contradiction by empowering the community along Roosevelt Avenue with the street vendor cart as a performative object to embodies their narratives. This process is open for multiple strangers to discuss and tell their stories about their experience in the street. Since the cart has been a mechanism of control over these voices, this spatial construct will be inverted to become the point of reflection and action for both the vendor and the larger community.

Supportive Concepts and Theoretical Research The area for research, fieldwork and development of the Vendor Vision Program is along Roosevelt Avenue, Queens. Specifically, the project focuses on Roosevelt Avenue between 82nd Street and 104th Street-- an arterial route in Queens due to traffic at street level and the number 7 train elevated above. Furthermore, the attention to this site is drawn from the growing tension between the existing space and the proposed expansion of Eighty-Second Street Business Improvement District (BID), called the Jackson Heights-Corona BID. BIDs are private-public associations that, by a collective, mandate extra tax agreed to by members (property and business owners), decide what can be done in these spaces, often with the goal of “beautifying” space and wiping the area of its crime. The implementation of a BID results in the removal of targeted undesirable people, unfair competition, and garbage in addition to the creation of spaces for leisure, transit, and the promotion of development and quality of life. However, the decisions and actions in support of the BID remain in the hands of the few that sit on the steering committee. Because of its private-public structure, the Jackson HeightsCorona Business Improvement District furthers the privatization and a commodification of public space. Much of the existing population in Roosevelt Avenue, such as street food vendors and several of the local small business owners, do not support this initiative and believe it will bring displacement and gentrification to the neighborhood. (Roosevelt Avenue Community Alliance, n.d). Many academics who

N AREA OF STUDY 1.92 KM (1.19 MILES)

ELMURST HOSPITAL

PARK OF THE AMERICAS

NEW PLAZA- 90 ST. PS 307

PS 19 COMMUNITY PLAYGROUND

JUNCTION BLVD-97 STREET

82 ST BID PUBLIC LIBRARY

CORONA PLAZA-103 ST

CORONA PLAZA 104 STREET & ROOSEVELT AVENUE

PROPOSED BID- JACKSON HEIGHT-CORONA PLAZA EXISTING BID 82 ST STREET VENDORS

100 STREET

JUNCTION BLVD & ROOSEVELT AVENUE

90 STREET - ELMHURST AVE

82 STREET & ROOSEVELT AVENUE

Mapping the proposed BID expansion along Roosevelt Avenue Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

Image juxtaposing BID campaign with street furniture implemented by street beautification.

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study urban issues have also disagreed with the BID model (Zukin, 1995; Low, 2006; Kohn, 2004); some refer to BIDs as a symbolic materialization of neoliberal growth (Robles-Duran, 2013) that creates exclusionary enclaves and a restriction of access of public space. Sharon Zukin (1995:36) suggests this implementation as a tool for “social stratification”. These commentators have argued that such private partnerships affect the potential for ideas of public space to be seen as a democratically oriented space. On the other hand, some business owners believe that the BID is the only way to protect their businesses from the consequences that might come with the construction of a mall at Willets Points in Roosevelt Avenue at 126th street. The BID also addresses dealing with the prostitution and crime that exists on the street. Moreover, many city planners and policymakers have seen the BIDs to be a successful tool to finance supplementary public services to specific areas (Furman Center, 2007). The tension between these two groups therefore makes for a site for the development of The Vendors Vision Program and the stride for active citizenship in a compromised public space. This plan for the implementation of the Jackson HeightsCorona Partnership is still pending the approval from the urban planning commission. In order to implement, the BID needs signatures from more than fifty percent of affected businesses to agree on the proposal. Till this date, they are still collecting signatures and looking for approval, though the process was going to be due in October 20132; tensions between those in favored and those who oppose the expansion have delayed the decision (P. Rincon, vendor October 16, 2013)3. Even though on the Jackson Heights-Corona Partnership website the street vendors are considered to be a stakeholder, Maria, a street vendor, says: it wasn’t until later that they were taken into consideration to be made part of the plan (M. Gonzalez, vendor October 26, 2013). This was mostly due to a protest held in Corona Plaza September 2013 against the BID (Barlet, 2013). While some 2 As of early May 2014, there still hasn’t been a voting on whether or not the BID is to be implemented the decision has been postponed until July 2014, this has been discussions on the street but there has been no online evidence currently to support this evidence. 3 The names of all the people interviewed were changed to protect their identity.

may point toward the contentions in the community environment, the expansion of the BID has arguably helped local businesses and street food vendors to organize around a collective issue. It has also helped a disjunctive community get together and create a social infrastructure.

Street Vending = Commoning In parallel to the organization around the Business Improvement District, food is a ubiquitous means to maintain a

cultural identity and a space for resilient identities to exist (Holtzman, 2006:373, in Viteri, 2011:222). This existing social practice thus bridges a community with a common cultural good –food – a common language and conversation in a specific space. Roosevelt Avenue is a neighborhood of immigrants; street food vending bridges global belonging to a local landscape, blurring the transnational boundaries and propagating local identity, ways of sharing experiences and meeting needs and necessities. This is commoning, in action, that composes the vitality of the city street and its people. Sense of belonging is different to everyone; in an immigrant life belonging is a complex state that goes beyond the idea of citizenship and identity (Yuval-Davis, 2007 in Viteri, 2011). Belonging creates a spatial relation where memory, history, tradition and food play a great role in building space. Cultural negotiation of space is the result of the exchange between the former territory with the cultural background of a person and is thus important in reading public space in an immigrant neighborhood. People make space and reproduce it according to their origin and their ideas, but also adopt and play around with the existing features of a space to create places of belonging. The Roosevelt Avenue commercial corridor presents a complex cultural negotiation where the multiple identities are connected in an intricate condition. The nostalgic idea of homeland in an immigrant neighborhood allows for a re-creation and re-assembly of the public space. Cultural traditions have to be contextualized in the new territory. Whenever there is a different cultural demonstration in space, the notion of insurgent citizenship becomes clearer, “the new spaces of citizenship that result are especially the product of the compaction and reterritorialization in cities of so many new resident with histories, Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Vendors commoning space along Roosevelt Avenue by expanding beyond the restraints of vending law.

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cultures, and demands that disrupt the normative and assumed categories of social life.” (Holston, 1999:50) The different histories, identities and traditions, disrupt the formal territory and inevitably demand for new urban spaces to be created. Food and its vendors play an important role in this cultural production of space as it brings together a group with similar identities to unite histories and collective memories (Vitari, 2011). Vendors reproduce their culture and collective identity. In the case of food vendors and local restaurants, the food distribution not only creates a link to their cultural background but also generates immigrant networks with the creation of small-local economies that evoke informal social infrastructures (Sanchez, 2013). There is a constant exchange of knowledge not only through the ways in which vendors operate on the street but also through the products and food sold by each vendor. There is thus a sharing of knowledge that overpasses the political barriers and frontiers to help other immigrants learn about the culture. Culture sharing in Roosevelt Avenue is one of its greatest assets and one that makes vending an act of commoning. What does it mean for street food vending to be a commons, as opposed to being a practice that exists on the street to serve the public? The terminology of public and private properties, space exists as the by-products of the capitalist system and elude to the organization of masses of people and collectivities. Common, on the other hand, refers to the communication and transference of knowledge and culture from one singularity to another (Reinhold, 2013): Here too we can discern an etymological resonance — common(s), communication — that is sharpened when Hardt and Negri claim that “the common does not refer to traditional notions of either the community or the public; it is based on the communication among singularities and emerges through collaborative social processes of production. (Ibid.) Street food vendors are these singularities on the street, producing a social infrastructure as they provide people with the food representative of their culture and motivations for supporting their families. In constructing the commons, the street vendor represents the melding of culture, food, space and language to produce a cultural reminiscent

of the country he or she identifies with. Through this process of communication and production, trust and ritualization are inscribed within the commons.

Trust & Ritualization As an emergent theme from speaking to vendors in workshops, a motivation to vend is to replicate the familiarity and ritual of preparing food from his or her country of origin. Then, once on the street, the vendor finds gratification of another person enjoying the food prepared that evokes a nostalgia for being in that country. In that moment of exchange, the vendor benefits from monetary compensation to provide for his or her family while the product connects the vendor and consumer, even if for the moment. As an example of the symbolic economy, trust is embedded in this process and reproduction of familiarity. As described in a focus group meeting, one member of Vamos Unidos mentions:

In my case, the area where I live there are a lot of Hispanos, right, from my country, so they used to love the food I prepare, so you feel good. That’s what I say, because they are in a place where they are being loved, where you feel good and you are making them their food, so that is why I sell, sometimes looking at people eating the food they are used eating makes you happy (Focus group, February 26, 2014)

In addition, many customers on Roosevelt Avenue buy their food from street food vendors because of the prices. The trust and ritualization help to build and feed into the local economy from both the consumer and producer standpoints. A mutual respect exists within that dichotomy. As one customer comments, “we need to support our people” (S. Obregon, client, October 23, 2013). From the perspective of the vender: I only ask that they support us so we can work. Because all of us have sons and daughters and families we need to take care of, want it or not, he [her partner] is working here, the people from the fruits they have their workers, one or two, but there is always a person, Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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[generating work], the ladies from over there [who sell Ecuadorian traditional food] have their employee, plus we pay our taxes, every 3 months and every year, we support the community, not like the rich, but nonetheless we support. M. Gonzalez, vendor, October 26, 2013)

In this sense, such constituents of street food vending, consumer and producer, are shaping the economy and the space in which they live and participate.

customers to the street but seen as parasitic if feeding too much from the customers of that business. Different perspectives encapsulate street food vending practice depending on the situation and the actors involved; therefore, when addressing relationships within this field, one must understand that enriching one relationship does not necessarily change these perspectives. Working with vendors and showcasing the assets of the practice merely places pressure for these relationships to evolve.

Connotations of Interacting in Space

Object as Active Agent

Furthermore, in order to understand the vendor within the broader scope of space, it is important to note that the perception of the role of the vendor within the urban realm may be positive, negative, or neutral due to his or her active engagements of others in that space. The vendor’s interaction with the urban can be referenced from biological explorations of interaction in its natural form. Interactivity between two entities then can be a transferable idea to explain the current condition of the vendor as seen from multiple perspectives. A cart could be seen as simply being, or as beneficial to the local businesses, or as competitive with the businesses. While this would be translatable into: symbiotic, mutualistic and parasitic relationships, the intention would be to encourage viewing the vendor with a commensalist lens in which the vendor, too, has a seat at the table. While all of these views are very present realities in the everyday, this project wishes to nurture a scenario in which the vendor brings positive resources to the community without fully depending on the forces that infringe upon it. The current state of street food vending in the urban environment echoes the state of symbiosis in which the vendor and the urban ecosystem “live together” (Leung, 2008:1). Symbiosis, as a term to describe coexistence of multiple entities, represents a larger umbrella of relationships between entities that are negative, positive, or neutral. Mutualism is the sharing of benefits between entities while parasitism describes a relationship where one positively benefits while the other is harmed. A street vendor may been seen to have a great, mutual relationship with the local business by bringing money and

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When interviewing street vendors about what they want and for what they fight for, their common response is “we just want to be able to sell.” However, the act of street vending is regulated and restricted by laws. One may consider the built environment as what Michel Foucault (1986) defines as the dispositif4. The physical realm embodies the convergence of multiple discourses of power to dictate the social. Such pressures standardize the built environment, limit public space, and consequentially, suppress multi-cultural expression, homogenizing society and space. Developing this notion, objects are actors with agency. It is through the built environment that power and regulations are translated to the practice of street vending. In other words, the city of New York regulates the cart of the street vendor, to be able to regulate street vending practice. As Bruno Latour argues objects are not seen as active actors in social relations, primarily to the perception that actors are seen as actions limited to intentional human activities. Nonetheless, if actors are seen as anything that “does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor-or if it has no figuration yet, an actant” (Latour, 2005:71), the question then is if the object creates an impact on other 4 “Heterogeneous apparatus consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, and philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions, all of which were involved in maintaining the exercise of power within a society (...) As these disciplinary mechanisms are spatial in nature, involving a symbiosis of architecture and another doctrine…” (Foucault 1986: 194-228 in Fontana-Guisti, 2013: 83)

agents actions. Therefore, the cart and regulated objects in the cart play an important actor that negates agency and induces particular actions. Objects shift from being mediators to intermediaries (Ibid. p.79), and become political actors as they provide a means of establishing patterns that suggest power and authority (Winner, 2008:132). As one views and reads an object, that person is not only understanding the object for its functions, but the objects collect meanings and show dynamics of the production of space. By dissecting the designed object, one understands the implied power dynamics and social constructions that have a material and semiotic relations. —Why are there some permit carts and other modes of vending? —What implications do this have in the idea of public space? —Who decides these types of regulations? What is at stake? Overlaying the multiple lenses and relationships that one vendor in space projects.

All of these questions arise when reading and aiming to

comprehend the purpose and intent of an object. The cart is not only a thing on the street but an actor that modifies and shifts other agents’ actions. For these reasons, using the cart of the street vendor is not only the method of visualizing these power dynamics and exemplifying how certain power is exercised. This visualization also allows for the questioning and discussing the power of Design in the production of space. As Foucault contemplates, the materializing object embodies discourses of those who are in power. These discourses are projected in objects and regulations that impact the performative action of street vending. The Vendors Vision Program expands on the rhetoric of Design to understand the implications and the conflicting ideas behind the power dynamics that shape the materiality of street food vending through the mechanism of government control--the street food cart.

Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Laws, Logistics, & Street Food Vending Politics and the regulation in New York City shape the current position of the vendor in the public space and in the eye of the prospective consumer. During the course of existence for the vendor in New York City, the debate has revolved around locating the business within city-controlled markets or allowing the sales to happen on the street. As political power and historical events have shifted, the deliberation of embedding the vendor into the streetscape, agglomerating all vendors into one location, or eliminating street vending altogether has been consequential of the larger, wavering economic and political circumstances of the time. In 1912, an article from the New York Times titled “Pushcart Question Reduced to Politics,” it notes that vendors still have yet to adhere to the regulations. In the article, the Bureau of Licenses and the police are acknowledged as additional entities facilitating the Mayor’s agenda to control the vendors. Since of licenses recorded was 2,300, the disproportion of vendors on the street in the numbers between 10,000 and 15,000 in Manhattan was concerning due to not only the disregard for the law but the congestion of the streets and unhealthful conditions developed as consequence (Pushcart Question Reduced to Politics, 1912). Additionally, a shift the mindset of how the street is to be used occurs. The article mentions that the vendors: were a hindrance to the free movement of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and that there was no more justice in allowing the streets to be used for market purposes than for industrial or manufacturing purposes…[Therefore] The resolutions provided that on an after Aug. 1, 1912, all pushcarts should be installed in open-air markets, temporarily provided, where they would cease to impede traffic or be a menace to the public health. (Ibid.) Spite the disconnect between the city and the vendor and the negative connotations toward the vendor derivative of that tension, the vendors proved beneficial to the city not long after pushcart vendors are allocated to public markets. As a response to World War I, the Food Council of this time utilized the carts to aid the poor in tenement 16 | The Vendors Vision Program

districts with food. (Demand Pushcart as Aid for Poor, 1918) In this case, when the New York City government is shaken by a larger crisis, legislations become amended or temporarily dismissed to quickly disseminate aid to the public affected by such crisis. Currently, two dominant entities, The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and The Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) output duplicate information for which the vendor can conduct himself or herself in space, via restricted streets, permitting, licensing, and etc. The mirrored information between agencies exist since the DOHMH and DCA declared an intra-city in 1996 that stated that the responsibility for administrative tasks concerning license and permits be relayed to the control of the Department of Consumer Affairs. (Memorandum of Understanding, 2010) After being audited in 2003 by the New York State Comptroller to review the effectiveness of this relationship, the responsibilities were outlined to be: DCA is responsible for processing all applications and issuing all licenses and permits, while DOHMH oversees the processes. DOHMH is responsible for establishing the policies, guidelines and operating procedures relevant to the issuance of licenses and permits, and for ensuring compliance with these policies, guidelines and procedures. All license and permit transactions are entered by DCA on the automated City Agencies Management Information System (CAMIS). (Ibid.) Therefore, the DOHMH follows the code laid out by the Administrative Code of New York and the Rules of New York City to implement these policies that define the requirements for licensure and permit. The vendor applies for the Mobile Food Vendor Licensure as proof of ability to handle food and applies for a permit for the food cart through the DOHMH. The DCA then processes this information. When reviewing the requirements for licensure and permitting, the DCA mirrors the information output by the DOHMH. In spite of the value in the vendor’s street presence, the vendor is marginalized before entering the street. If following the practices established by government entities such as the New York City Department of Hygiene (DoH), the candidate vendor must apply for a food-handling license and also a permit to purchase a cart to even

begin vending on the street. Currently, there are 3,100 permits available in New York City, and a wait list to obtain a permit can take nearly a decade. Such vendors must find other means to sell and make a living. Automatically, this divides street food vendors into those that obtain permits through legal measures5 and those that find alternative ways of making a living by selling the food that they culturally reproduce. The city’s response to street food vendors is through fines and seizure of the cart--further supporting the cart as the means by which governmental entities maintain control over the social. For instance, one vendor expressed in an interview the immensity of tickets that may be received from this pressure from law enforcement. The vendor states during a monthly Vamos Unidos meeting: a thousand, thousand, thousand, the police, not DoH, but it is more the police, they take my husband very month, as I am ill, they take him each month for two hours, instead of a ticket of one thousand, ‘I’m going to take you’, they take a picture and send for you after two hours. (Presentation Vamos Unidos, February 26, 2014)

Top 2 and bottom image visualizing legalities that define street food vending.

Applies for

Restricted Permit to vend

Department of

Parks and Recreation Office of Administrative Trail and Hearings

STREET FOOD

VENDOR Applies for

Permit for the Cart

License to Vend Food

if a No ven tic do eo rr f V ece iol iv ati es on a :

one of the 4 Tribunals of: “enforced” by:

Department of

Police

Health Tribunal

through Processed by: mitigates process to make sure vendor has tax clearance Department of

Finance

Department of

Health and Mental Hygiene Sets guidelines for permit and license

Consumer Affairs 1996 Intra-City Agreement set to connect DOHMH & DCA

Mimics DOHMH regulations

Another vendor states similar concerns during and on the street interview that the “DoH will ticket you up to 1,000 dollars when they notice you have something wrong” (I. Giraldo, vendor, October 28, 2013). Within these conversations, the discussions of the governmental pressure on street vending surround the specific enforcing departments: the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, also referred to as the Department of Health (DoH), and the Police Officers. While the vendor may be a contributor to the construction of the commons, vendors have expressed the presence of governmental and private institutions that conflict with their ability to sell and exist on the street.

contest in court through the:

5 Most of the street vendors that have a permit rent it through the Black Market. The Black Market is born out of the cap of allowed permits in NYC, provoking the emergence of permit rentals that go from US$15,000-25,000 for a period of two years -the city on the other hand sells their permit for US$200 for a two year periodMaintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Transcribing Narratives In order to capture the stories that may not be heard as a result of the inflicting sources of power, the Vendors Vision Program creates upon a book called Transcribing Narratives. Transcribing Narratives is a tool used to collect and spatialize spoken material from interviews. It translated and transcribed the interviews, focus groups and presentation to later find and literally draw connections. From the Transcribing Narratives the needs and unmet needs were recognized, including the stories and struggles the vendors wanted to share. These stories and need are the foundation for understanding the practice of street food vending and to connect the lived spaces with the conceived and perceived space (Lefebvre, 1991). The exercise allowed to comprehend through personal stories how the laws and regulations restrict food vending and how these laws have also an impact in the construction of a democratic public space. In the following stories, there are threads of similarity and disjuncture, as the many voices do not speak to one story but many. To begin, many of the street food vendors are on the street selling as an alternative to make a living, from the low wages, abuse and harassment found in other jobs around the city, street vending is an alternative that helps them support their families. Porque como le digo como no tenemos papeles, que seguridad hay, muchas veces yo iba trabajar a Manhattan a Brooklyn a lugares lejos, muchas veces iba a NJ, me iba de aquí a NJ dos horas y medias, iba trabajaba todo el día y qué, me decían 60-70 dólares, y hay veces que ni me pagaban. Entonces cual es la opción de vender, yo lo hago, pero sé que yo lo voy a hacer y es mío... Muchas veces trabajaba dos semanas y no me pagaban, y me decías, “qué me vas a alegar, si no tienes papeles, que pruebas tienes (Grupo Focal, febrero 26, 2014) But as I was telling you, we don’t have papers, what security is there. There were many times that I went to work to Manhattan, Brooklyn, far away places, many times to NJ. I went from here [Queens] to NJ, two hours and a half, worked all day and what--they would give me 60-70 dollars, and sometimes they wouldn’t pay me. So what is the option of vending? I do it, but I know that what I am going to earn is mine. Many times I went to work two weeks and they would pay, and 18 | The Vendors Vision Program

they would say ‘what are you going to do? If you don’t have papers, what proof do you have?’ (Focus Group, February 26, 2014)

Though vending is a practice that helps immigrant communities to survive in the city, many of them cannot do it

following the legal constraints set by New York City departmental agencies. Instead, vendors look for alternatives modes of vending usually exposing themselves to harassment, financial repercussions, and jail time. In the following quote, the vendor speaks to the lack of negotiation between the vendor and officer: ... A nosotros no nos dejan vender, que te puedo decir, las leyes son las leyes. No puedes discutir con ellos porque son las leyes (Cómo lo haces?) Ja, imagínate, inventándome, inventándome como le hago para pagar mis cuentas. porque imagínate, si no hago esto no tendría dinero, pero no creas que a mi me gusta. Estoy expuesta a muchas cosas, muchas veces me llevan a la cárcel. (M. Gonzalez, vendor, Oct. 26, 2013) ...They don’t let us sell. What can I tell you? Laws are laws. You cannot discuss with them because they are laws. (How do you do it?) Ha imagine. Inventing, inventing, to see how I can pay my bills. Because imagine, if I don’t do this, there is no money-- but don’t think that I like it. I am exposed to a lot--sometimes I get thrown into jail (M. Gonzalez, Oct. 26, 2013)

However, while the officer is told to enforce the laws, at times, a possibility exists for the vendor and the office to form a relationship after multiple counts of harassment. This vendor speaks to that experience: Ahora la policía me respeta, me saludan. (Alguna vez la llevaron a la cárcel?) Miles de veces, por la comida, yo vendía en las calles sin un permiso, entonces me llevaban. ME pateaban...tantas cosas que he pasado. No ha sido fácil sentarse acá, me trataban como un delincuente (I. Giraldo, Octubre 14, 2013) Now the police respect me. They say hi. (Did they ever take you to jail?) Thousands of times because of the food. I sold on the streets. I did not have a permit, so they took me away. They would kick me…

Presentation and workshop with vendors at a Vamos Unidos meeting in Queens on February 26, 2014.

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so many things that I have gone through here. It hasn’t been easy to sit here … they treated me like a delinquent. (I. Giraldo, October 14, 2013)

Being on the street means you are exposed. For the vendors it is not only being exposed to the local authorities harassment and tickets, but also to other dangers such as being robbed. Si se expone uno a todo, a que lo roben a que lo golpeen, a pérdidas de dinero, que le boten sus cosas, a todo, hasta la muerte porque supuestamente uno esta ahí, pero digo de todo, lo roban, lo golpean, incluso hasta con la misma policía que tiene que defenderlos a uno, a mi muchas veces me botaban todo, y que tiene que hacer uno, volver empezar (Grupo Focal, febrero 26, 2014) You are exposed to all, to be robbed, to be hit, to loss of money, for things to be thrown away, to all, even death because supposedly one is there, but I say everything, stolen, beaten, even with the same police who has to defend you, so many times they have thrown everything, and you have to do one thing, go back and start again. (Focus Group, February 26, 2014)

Negotiating with the police and dealing with the issues of racist mentality behaviors are some of the struggles the vendors have to deal with in their everyday. These stories are a crucial part of The Vendors Vision Program in order to be able to understand the claims and problems the vendors deal with. In addition, the language barrier is another limitation for the vendors. Many of the issues vendors have with policeman or local authorities pertain to the barriers to communicate with them. This shows the needs of each community and is reflected in the conversation with the street vendors. La policía nos molesta pero es más que todo porque a ellos les gusta que le hablen en inglés, que ellos te hablen y que tu seas capaz de comunicarte en inglés, y les gusta que uno los respete (C. Martinez, vendor, octubre 16, 2013) The police bother us, but it is mostly because they like that you talk to them in English. They will talk to you and [if] you are able to communicate in English it’s ok. (C. Martinez, vendor, Oct. 16, 2013) 20 | The Vendors Vision Program

Negotiating with local authorities are not the only concerns the vendors have. The weather plays an important role on their business. Variations in weather conditions decide whether or not the business will be profitable that day. Rain, sun, snow and wind are part of the vendors day-to-day, and being exposed to these elements constitutes a reality of the job. Some regulations for street food vending do not take into consideration these exposures and vendor’s health. One vendor mentions her experience with the weather: Hay veces salimos, salgo a las 10:30 de la mañana estoy en el verano, hasta las 7pm estoy sentada, estoy en el sol, y hay veces no se vende, hay veces se vende, y estar ahí en todo el sol. Y ahora en el invierno estar, aunque uno se ponga tres pantalones, y unas cuatros casacas, las piernitas y las rodillas son heladas, heladas. (Grupo focal, febrero 26, 2014)

burn. When I had the gloves for the whole day, the glove on the hands burned. My hands would peel for having glove all day...Your hands will be sore, but DoH demands it...Sometimes the glove would rip, and I [would] change it. It felt good, so I wouldn’t want to wear them anymore. But I was scared that DoH would ticket me, 500 dollars, one thousand dollars, so I would wear them. But then when you get to your house every night, I would have to heal my hands, with the sore and everything. And knowing that the next day you are going to wake up and another 12 hours of gloves. (Focus Group, February 26, 2014) These are only fragments and bit of the multiple conversations and interviews that were held. The vendors want for people to understand the struggles they encounter in a daily basis:

There are times that I go out at 10:30 am, and I’m all day sitting until 7 pm. I’m exposed to the sun, and sometimes you don’t sell anything. There are times you sell, and staying there in the sun. And now that its winter, being there, even though you put three pants, and four jackets, your knees and legs are freezing, freezing! (Focus Group, February 26, 2014)

Furthermore, the latex gloves mandatory to cook and prepare food harms their hands in severe ways. With the extreme weather they encounter, using the gloves makes it impossible to put mittens to keep your hand warm. A mi me cocía, cuando tenía el guante todo el día me cocía, cuando tenía todo el día el guante en las manos se me cocía. Las manos se me pelaban, el guante todo el día ahí...Se le yagan las manos, pero es lo que exige sanidad…Muchas veces a mi se me rompía un guante, cuando yo lo cambiaba, sentía rico, entonces no me los quería poner, pero estaba con miedo que me iba a ver la sanidad y me pongan un tkt de 500 dólares, mil dólares, entonces me lo ponía. Pero entonces cuando llegaba a la casa todas las noches, curarme las manos, con yagas y todo eso. Saber que otro día ustedes va a amanecer y otras 12 horas para tener el guante (Grupo Focal, febrero 26, 2014)

I would burn. When I had the gloves, all day my hands would

Pues a mi me gusto esa idea que ustedes tiene para que todo el mundo vea lo que sufrimos los vendedores ambulantes, queremos tratar de cambiar un poco, y que nos escuchen (Grupo focal, febrero 26, 2014) Well I like the idea that you have so that everyone knows how vendors suffer, we want to try to change thing a little bit and that we are listen (Focus Group, February 26, 2014)

After collecting these stories that talk about many different forces of being on the street, the Vendors Vision Program does not aim to solve the issues that arose in the vendor’s sharing this information. By bringing these narratives to the surface, the Vendors Vision Program illustrates these voices in order to create a movement on the street. This strategy creates a broad movement to place pressure on the forces that the vendor contends with. Through this pressure the hope is that these challenges would lessen over time.

Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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The Vendors Vision Program The design of the city is a field of contestation between different actors; nonetheless, in the case of Roosevelt Avenue, the actors are being active in the decision of their space making. This active citizenship brings a space for opportunity for the community to unite and to create new projects around their collective imaginary of space. These claims are therefore a living exercise of the right to the city that Harvey incessantly argues for, and represent a possibility for â&#x20AC;&#x153;collective action to create something radically different.â&#x20AC;? (Harvey, 2012:xvii) Claims, as Mandanipour (2010) suggests, can be made by powerful individuals and institutions, but can also be made by small organizations and individuals who want to shape their own space. These claims can determine and imagine how they want their public space to look; the absence of them, however, can also determine the future of a space. (Mandanipour, 2010)

The city is a dynamic landscape constantly reinventing itself, generating new cartographies and new forms to navigate it. The social infrastructure that has been developed in response to the expansion of the BID opens the doors for new opportunities to rethink the notions of what it mean to be in public space and what is public space. For these new opportunities to be able to happen, a new platform or stage needs to exist where people can get together and decide what should be done. This stage needs to be a place where knowledge can be transmitted, where dialogue and discussion are part of the everyday in projects oriented towards a common goal. The expansion of the BID has become a platform to discuss important issues in the community and a greater discussion about the public space, but there needs to be another outlet that can discuss other alternatives and defy other notions of public. The Vendors Vision Program gathers all people in public space,

ised rom P? p m U e co EAK r a P ” S s ace O WE “Pl WD HO

THE VENDORS VISION PROGRAM MANUAL 23

The Vendors Vision Program Manual materials.

IMMIGRATION RACISM

GREEN CARTS ENTREPENEURS FRUITS AND VEGETABLES COMMISSARIES STORE FRONTS LICENSE

TAXES

HARRASSMENT

POLICE TICKETS SIDEWALK DEPARTMENT OF UNEMPLOYMENT BLACK MARKET STREET CART HEALTH VETERANS

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISPLACEMENT DISTRICTS

PERMITS 5”x10” REGULATIONS

SPACE I SAY I VEND FOOD ON THE

BEAUTIFICATION PRIVATIZATION SECURITIZATION

STREET : HERE’S WHAT IS ALSO POLICY BORDERS COMMODIFICATION BEING SAID LANGUAGE PLACE FOOD JUSTICE

CULTURE

LOCAL ECONOMIES

Word bubble representing associated terms and topics that are inherently discussed when talking about street food vending.

24 | The Vendors Vision Program

FOOD

including artists and street food vendors, through labs that discuss public space through the lens of street food vending. The leaders of this process are artists from surrounding neighborhood in order to push temporal, three hour long workshops to active as many discussions and graphics as possible. During this process, visual and graphic materials are produced to exist in public space that build a movement for using the right of freedom to free speech.

MANIFESTO: STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE: 1. STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE AT RISK IN THE EVERYDAY Due to years of evolving legislation and regulations, the ability to operate increasingly becomes impaired. The vendor must have both a license and a permit in order to sell food on the street. No permit = no ownership of a street cart. The street cart? Careful outlined and defined by food preparation safety and placement on the street. Stainless steel must be used for easy cleaning. The cart must be at least 20’ from a commercial storefront, but also 10’ from a crosswalk. The intent behind these laws is cleanliness and congestion control, but what happens when the street has storefront upon storefront? Twenty-feet, twenty-feet. No vendor? If these laws are not abided by, there can be a many tickets in one instant, $1,000 each. This does not equate with what the vendor earns.

2. STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE MONEY ON THE STREET If someone is buying food from a vendor, he or she is helping a local economy. Street vending attracts people and as we all know the more the merrier. By buying food from a street cart you are helping thousands of families to reach their dreams. You are helping to keep the money in the neighborhood and helping bringing people to the street. By buying food from a street vendor, the neighborhood is secure.

3. STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE CONNECTED TO THEIR COMMUNITY Street vendors are always on the street, they know you, know your family, know the street and know the problems each community faces. Street vendors are constant observing the streets of New York. Because of their role of constant anthropologist, street vendors are experts in understanding the concerns of citizens in relation to their neighborhood. For these reasons, the voice of the street vendor is one that should not be shut down, but on the contrary should be given a voice to communicate community’s needs.

4. STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE PLACE Without street food vendors, space is just space; merely becoming a place. Street vending helps each neighborhood have a different life and style because of the diverse experiences that people bring to the street. Street vending is the character of the street, and without character, the street is merely an infrastructural component of the city devoid of the things that make place: memories, experiences and senses.

5. STREET FOOD VENDORS ARE NOT TO BE DISPLACED

Getting into the Project

“For Hardt and Negri, “saving” capitalism from its self- destructiveness in these ways is not an end in itself, but the first stage of a transition that “requires the growing autonomy of the multitude from both private and public control; the metamorphosis of social subjects through education and training in cooperation, communication, and organizing social encounters; and thus a progressive accumulation of the common.” (Reinhold, 2013) Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Protests are multiscalar and exist within the everyday. Everyday, tensions and disagreements occur, but often build to a moment of rupture--hence our usual vision of what it means to protest. The Vendors Vision Program seeks to visualize the tensions that slowly build in the everyday and to enrich the voices behind them. By doing so, the project opens spaces for dialogue and negotiations that carry a strong message on how citizens want their public space to be constructed. This project will target every age group in a neighborhood or community to explore the values of knowledge sharing, freedom of speech, and creativity. Opening these spaces of expression, residents will be empower to understand their political role, to question existing notions, to develop projects in favor of their community and to think beyond the existing paradigm to find solutions for current problems concerning public space and street food vending. The following are expected outcomes: 1. An active participation from the citizens of each lab. 2. A community that thinks outside the box and that has the pertinent tools to use creativity as methods to speak up and to show their concerns. 3. A critical population concerned about the social, economical and political issues that govern cities today. 4. A safe environment to speak and to dialogue. Artists will be the engine for the programming initiatives of The Vendors Vision Program to gather interest and to create this temporal plug-in movement that sheds attention on the well-being and economic stability of the street food vendors that compose it. In addition, The Vendors Vision Program opens a space for street vendors to celebrate their practice of commoning with neighborhood residents and meet needs of vendors that are left out by the restrictive nature of the laws that govern their practice. Furthermore, to maintain and amplify cultural narratives along Roosevelt Avenue lies between the moment of approach from the passerby and the exchange between the vendor and consumer. The street cart is the physical device for capturing attention at this crux. In this sense, the intervention will be a vehicle for opening a conversation 26 | The Vendors Vision Program

and approaching the vendor, while the exchange will come with an action plan that will start an interaction and dialogue. The project is not only an exploration about the power of objects and their rhetoric but mostly and foremost an exploration of activating citizenship in a community and an exercise that empowers communities to think creatively and critically about their place. The object then becomes a means to empower citizens, but it is through the exchange of knowledge and open conversations that a real movement starts. The intervention works as a depository of stories about experiences on the street, an ongoing performance that expands symbolically and physically the street vendor’s footprint to act as a space of exchange of knowledge.

Implementation: Staging the Object

Using the existing street space, the objective is to open spaces for freedom of expression and political active citizenship to take place. A mobile stage will plug-in to the cart to open a space to question what is public for no more than three hours at a time. The stage is very simple and cost-effective to build with the vision of being able to be multiplied throughout the city. The plug-in consists of the junction of two laundry carts with a hard surface on the top, resembling the mode of vending of the non-permitted vendors as a way of celebrating all the types of vending that exist throughout the city. The Vendors Vision Program will be placed adjacent to the side of the street food vendor cart, marking on the floor with tape the same five-foot by ten foot restrictive space the vendor has in order to sell legally according to New York’s regulations. The program will have two project organizers conducting workshops that lead and provoke questions utilizing The Vendors Vision Program manual. The space adjacent to the street vendor’s cart transforms into an open stage, a space that by only demarcating it and changing its usual use, acquires a new meaning and opens spaces for new possibilities. By staging the alternative modes of vending near the permitted street vending cart, the aim is to perform an act of appropriation in the public space that symbolizes and questions its use. This action of opening a discussion through a table is reflecting on the idea of street vending as an act of commoning but also brings people to gather around food to discuss and engage with the city. By

WHAT YOU NEED TO SET-UP 1

GATHER YOUR MATERIALS 3- ACRYLIC PAINT ($4.62) 1- SURFACE PLYWOOD-4’x8’ ($12.32) 1- DUCT TAPE ($3.93) 3- FOAM BRUSHES ($0.75) 1- PAINT TRAY ($.98) 2- LAUNDRY CARTS ($40.00) 1- ACRYLIC COATING ($8.63) 1- CLOTH ($9.98) 2- POSTERS ($10.00) 3- SCISSORS ($8.49) 1- GLUE (2.49) 1- BOX OF INDEX CARDS ($13.99) 1- BOX COLOR PENCILS ($.479) 1- LADDER ($32.30) *This prices are approximations and may vary. The prices are above are for each unit and not the total.

REST A SURFACE [PLYWOOD] BETWEEN 2 CARTS

MARK OUT WITH TAPE YOUR SPACE (5’x10’)

CONDUCT THE LAB!

Diagram included in the manual to describe what one needs to set-up the space and how. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Setting the stage adjacent to the street food vender cart.

28 | The Vendors Vision Program

By situating near the vendor, the stage is also situated in space to infratructure such as subway entrances.

Picture from implementation showing the use of the laundry cart in setting the stage for materials.

29 | The Vendors Vision Program

opening these spaces, the street vendor, the residents, the consumers and the city authorities will openly discuss today’s urban issues in an exchange of knowledge that also opens a space to bridge differences and for other voices to be heard. The importance of opening these types of spaces is that the conversation starts and develops in the street--in the place of contestation as opposed to elsewhere.

Implementation: The Program

The Vendors Vision Program in collaboration with artists, vendors, community, and so forth will claim a space adjacent to the street food vendor to “produce art.” To instigate and initiate action, the artists will lead the conversations and development of the work. In a space that measures roughly the same footprint as the street vendor cart of five feet by ten feet, the people coming together in this space will host a lab that will differ depending if the vendor is able to participate or not. This collaboration will not last more than three hours as to not overstay welcome with the vendor while he or she continues to vend on the street. During this workshop, artists will provoke conversation about the public. Afterwards, will produce a graphics for the vendor to display on their cart, through the umbrella or through a poster. The materials used during this workshop include: paint, paint rollers, mediums to paint on such as paper or the canvas of the umbrella, and items to construct the surface for the artist to paint on. The objective is to discuss concerns how we as people perceive, conceive and live public space and to produce graphic campaigns for the vendors that visually build a movement of free speech in this sphere. For instance, in the case of Roosevelt Avenue, the objective is to question the proposed implementation of a private-public partnership in that space, what that means for the current commercial corridor and what impacts this will have on the vendors that exist in that precarious tension of change.

WHAT DO WE HAVE IN COMMON? CULTURE - PRODUCTION - FOOD a lab for the exploration of contradiction & the Co-Production of Change through Commons

What’s Needed: Blank Index Cards, Blank Paper, Drawing Utensils Toolbox + The Vendors Vision Program Manual What’s About to Happen: This will be a conversation of the cultural importance of an item that the vendor sells. During this conversation, you will make a recipe / cultural procedure for how the food is made. You will through this process identify what it is that the cart is unable to perform to make that food and find notions that food production on the street isn’t all that unlike what happens in your own kitchen. Through questions highlighting the contradictions of street vending laws and regulations of the street to the unmet needs found embedded in that practice as a result. How can the vendor build on what they are already doing through imagining a facilitative device? How do we constantly frame this practice as one that lives on the street, in a space we deem public? How is food and the production of food bring us together in this space? In the Vendors Vision Program manual, you will also find reference pages that lay out the laws and regulations for space and street food vending.

Images to the right show the labs included in the manual as well as its implementation.

30 | The Vendors Vision Program

This process blurs seeing, thinking, speaking, making and doing for the creative process to take flight.

HOW TO MAKE OBJECTS TALK? EMPOWERING CREATIVITY- CHANGING MEANINGS a lab to encourage and rethink objects & the way they talk to have other meanings

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Needed: Glue, Drawing Utensils, Paint, Strings, Scissors... Toolbox + The Vendors Vision Program Manual Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s About to Happen: This would be a way of appropriating the street with your thoughts. Grab any of the materials the vendor uses in his/her everyday. Think of something you would like the object to say about an issue that concerns you referring to public space. Look around, what do you see, what would you like to see, why is the space how it is, and what would you like for the space to be. Through words, painting, repositioning, collage, etc. make an intervention to change the function of the object you found. With this intervention the object acquires a new meaning. Think of all the things you can be saying! Empowering and rethinking about objects you can tell stories, protest, imagine new scenarios and change your place. Also, you can start questioning certain objects that are taken for granted but really change how we relate or communicate with public space. This process will allow for people to use the existing spaces and objects and to see them beyond the material and physical. It will spark creativity and challenge to think of the city, its objects, design and people in a whole different way. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Implmentation: The Appropriation

Specifically, participants will appropriate an existing umbrella on the vendor’s cart or a poster given to the vendor with a message he or she would like others to know. Depending on the type of street cart, if the vendor is an employee or an owner, the circumstance, the appropriation will differ. This appropriation becomes the insignia of the movement and a way of protesting on the street, a way of letting all members of the street to have a voice. The umbrella or poster is a means to attract attention and to symbolize action. By working within the limits of the law, the object of the umbrella6 or poster becomes an active agent in the production of space. The umbrella or poster will be designed through the use of simple materials including acrylic paint, stencils, and a paintbrush. Beyond the physical materials, the participants of the lab and the vendor generate a message for which the collective would like portrayed on the street. In the case of Roosevelt Avenue, the goal would be to contact and co-create with as many vendors along that visual axis.

6 While numerous laws and regulation strictly specifies the physicality in which the vendor may sell, Article §81.31 vaguely states: “Overhead protection. Cooking equipment and utensils shall be covered by lids or larger overhead protections such as a tent, canopy, umbrella or other device.” This “other device” is the point of intervention. Current overhead protection structures such as the umbrella serve as a means not only to protect, but also to advertise and collect people within the parameters of the cart. This overhead protection device will not only serve these purposes but surface conversations such as immigration, policing and racism through space and time.

32 | The Vendors Vision Program

The stage becomes the space for conversation between facilitator and vendor.

Using acrylic paints, foam brushes, stencils and creativity to project the vendorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s message.

33 | The Vendors Vision Program

Covering each panel with a message, in both Spanish and English as the vendor had decided.

34 | The Vendors Vision Program

Spraying the protective coating over the acrylic paint and away from the vendor to keep fumes from the food.

Locating the appropriated umbrella on the cart in its space.

35 | The Vendors Vision Program

Implementation: The Movement & Vision The movement will naturally surface once multiple labs are conducted throughout the city. An essential part of the project is

empowering creativity. This goal will be accomplished by giving the community the tools necessary for them to pursue the changes they would like in their public space. As every space is different throughout the city, the way people question the notion of public will also vary. This project, therefore, is an exercise that not only shows what each neighborhood is requesting, demanding, and understanding from their public spaces. Through the repetition of labs and appropriates, these activities will propel the movement as one that is visually recognizable and transferable. Once every street cart has a strong message imprinted in their cart, people will know further about the narratives of street food vending and how people imagine their public spaces by visual examples. This movement works as a critical design provoking more questions to rise as opposed to finding solutions to problems; this program inspires and holds accountable the empowerment to exercise the right to the city.

If the vendor didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to do their umbrella, or didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have an umbrella, the lab would include screenprinting posters.

36 | The Vendors Vision Program

The screenprinted poster would have the same affect as the umbrella in portraying a message.

Eventually, the larger movement would include each vendor participating in this program to cover the street with messages. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Reflecting on Implementation (May 12, 2014) Implementation of the Vendors Vision Project occurred on May 12th, 2014. The pilot project occurred along Junction Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue for approximately two hours. During this time, the piloting of the project helped to highlight the strengths and flaws within the program. Before entering the street, two vendors at this intersection had been contacted to participate in the workshop; both of these agreed to participate. An established relationship with the vendors allowing for the invitation to be more likely accepted. The time chosen to meet to execute the project was 3:00 pm. Upon arrival to Junction Boulevard to begin doing work, the first vendor planned to receive the implementation was not there. Although the vendor’s cart and license was in its space, the vendor was not on the street. After calling the vendor to followup, she conveyed that she was not in the area and would not be able to participate. While this proved inconvenient given there was an agreement to meet at that time, circumstances such as this do arise and are a reality of the project. Therefore, the project moved to the next vendor that agreed to the intervention. Speaking with M. Gonzalez and J. Gonzalez about what they would like for the umbrella to say, they quickly agreed it should say “Let us work!” The two also wanted to have another phrase that spoke to the trash and garbage on the street-- an element of being on the street that they feel harms their business. From the conversation, it was decided to stencil “Don’t throw trash. Thanks.” As organizing our plug-in spot next to the vendor began, nearby people were curious and questioning what was happening. Much of this curiosity was exhibited through observance rather than conversation. As the prints on the umbrellas started to emerge and people could read the messages, people then began to stop and ask what was going on. It was in these moments that allowed for the engagement with people and explain the purpose 38 | The Vendors Vision Program

of the work and the overall vision. The people that were interested were from all age groups. Conversations about public space and food were the more prominent topics, and as more messages were written in the umbrella, the more excited the Gonzalez couple were about the project. They were excited of how this small intervention was a way for them to express their desires and concerns. They thought that writing a message on the umbrella was a great idea. Even though they already have an umbrella written with the products they sell, they preferred to have an umbrella that spoke more about what they felt. Topics such as public space, politics, movements, the BID, and food a part of the conversations that were held in the Vendors Vision Program module. When the stencils with the two messages were finished, M. Gonzalez said the message should be also written in English. She said that there is still many people around that did not speak Spanish and that they should also know how they felt. People shared food as we were talking about the project and about what it means to be in public space. One particular man came, held a conversation, left, then came back with ice cream sandwiches, and then proceeded to talk. An additional force that was felt during implementation was the weather. While working, it became clear that it was about to rain. Because the medium being stenciled onto the umbrella was acrylic paint and not yet sprayed with a protective coating, it forced the work to come along faster. Stresses of working on the street in this scenario elude to concerns of weather that many vendors have referenced during their previous interviews. Once the painting had been complete, the protective coating for the paint on the umbrella had to take place on the street behind the cart in order to keep the fumes away from the food. In the future, this would be a part of the process that needs to be fleshed out more. The Vendors Vision Program opened a space for people

The implementation further instigated the commons by passerby bringing facilitators ice cream sandwiches.

As messages on the umbrella, more people became interested with the purpose and engaged in conversation about it. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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to exchange in conversations and to talk about what it means to be in public. It was a very subtle and interactive way to spark discussions. The intervention on the umbrella was celebrated by other vendors and by business owners from the area. Another vendor near by asked to have her umbrella intervene next week when she gets her new cart. By others showing interest through the process and outcomes of this intervention, the movement for creating more interventions and conversations about public space begins.

Projecting the Future of the Movement

As the movement grows larger, the objective is to activate a new generation of citizenship that has the tools needed to request or to take ownership of their space on the street. Building awareness that citizenship not only suggests the traditional meaning of belonging to a nation-state but also the insurgent citizenships (Holston and Appadurai, 1999:2). The Vendors Vision Program imagines a movement that will change the practice and the way public space is approached directly by the community with a mission to speak. The number of participants of each lab will measure the results, but nonetheless, its being embraced by the local community and eventually communities across New York City will mark the true success. Visually, one walking along the street would observe multiple umbrellas and posters across the city with similar visual language to project individual stories of existing on the street. In the short term, this graphic translation of desires and concerns will educate passerby on the street of the varying narratives, regulations, and perceptions of the people that inhabit the street and view the terms of the public. Looking more long term, the Vendors Vision Program uses street food vending

practice as an example of flipping the paradigm of the public to

be one that is common--altering the perceived, conceived and lived spaces of New York City. By building solidarity with vendors and the community, the eventual goal would be altering policy to be more accepting of the everyday economies that create the infrastructures of streets, and of what is deemed as the public. 40 | The Vendors Vision Program

Street food vendors with their newly appropraited umbrella in their space!

41 | The Vendors Vision Program

Reflections Private and institutional forces are compromising public spaces. Specifically, the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are spreading across New York City to clean and beautify the streets, sterilizing these spaces from cultural appropriations. As a business on the street representational of New York City culture, the Vendors Vision Program utilizes street food vending as the mechanism for reclaiming those spaces, allowing for people and communities to exchange knowledge with decision-makers, and transforming the public-private paradigm. Given the immense amount of regulation governing the street food vendor cart and the space in which it is allowed to be situated, the cart becomes the spark for seeing how street food vending practice is currently creating a commons on the street through language, food and space. As a commons, the street food vendor cart is the physical device that grabs attention on the street to portray messages of desires

and concerns through the Vendors Vision Program. By appropriating the umbrella or adhering a poster produced by discussion in the space of confliction, these items are using opportunities that the law does not regulate to reflect not only the vendor but also the community in which the vendor assimilates. Through the transference of knowledge through discussion and graphic development workshops, the Vendors Vision Program specifically breaks down into the object, program and movement to allow for the vendors to individually exist as a business on the street but form a visual collectivity for protesting in the street the pressures that restrict them. Street food vending is an everyday practice that speaks to issues of immigration, racism, public space, and endless further conversations. The Vendors Vision Program resonates within these narratives to project a story to the city, as the city, for a just city.

Looking at the messages while standing beneath the umbrella, ordering food.

Case Studies The following influential case studies for The Vendors Vision Program divide into three categories that represent the intention of the project: objects, programs and movements. Through the different lenses, means and approaches, these case studies open a new scope of generating social change.

MOVEMENT

HOMELESS MUSEUM

Functional: fullfilled needs

BLUE HOUSE

Political stance- design to illustrate social realities

Mobility

Using art as a catalyst for social change

Organization structure

Building a movement

Collaborative design

Playfulness

Empower others to start a process

Opening spaces for the unvoiced

Using art as a way of protesting

Ongoing collective research Exchange and dialogue

Bridge of empathy

SUKKAH CITY, 2010

CONFLICT KITCHEN

Plug-in Ritual, ceremony

Food as a way of opening conversation

Gathering place

Visualization of conflict

Cover Constructed out of otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s materials

Empowering Creativity

HOMELESS VEHICLE PROJECT

Commoning

PROGRAM

TIMBERICHE

Plug-in Urban strategy Educational devise Scale Mobile Exchange

Interchangeability

Rethinking an existing structure

Knowledge Exchange

OBJECT

THE VENDORS VISION PROGRAM Voice

Communicate

Translate Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Homeless Vehicle Project Delving deeper into the capacity of an object to project such notions, we looked at Krzysztof Wodiczko’s art piece Homeless Vehicle Project. The vehicle plays a functional solution and a symbolic instrument, used to question ideas of exclusion made by politics against the homeless. Neil Smith (1992) discusses the object as a metaphorical tool in space, calling into question challenges of scales; Rosalyn Deutsche (1996), also applauds this initiative that highlights the marginalization and exclusion of the homeless population in our social reality. Learning from this project, the aim is to develop a new way of sensorially reading the everyday through the cart with a means that is beyond representational.

Sukkah City A second case study was Sukkah City in New York City in 2010. The architectural competition was established to rethink the Sukkah-- a Jewish temporary hut constructed during Sukkot festive. This hut symbolizes the Jewish dwelling and confronts the ideas of permanence and temporality. The Sukkah symbolizes hospitality, welcoming strangers and wandering. This competition opened the conversation to rethink the hut and to discuss contemporary issues in relation to the tradition of the Sukkah. This example lends well to looking at different ways to rethink the overhead device of the street cart. Furthermore, this project served to exemplify the rituals and ceremonies that are projected in an object and how in the case of street food vending these rituals are actions that are practiced in the everyday.

Vendor Power! CUP

Beginning with the Center for Urban Pedagogy’s (CUP) project for Making Policy Public, CUP collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) to develop a fold-out pamphlet titled “Vendor Power” 46 | The Vendors Vision Program

that informs the vendor of his or her rights visually. (Vendors Power!, n.d) Specifically, the fold-out distills dense city regulation to diagram the amount of space, using the metrics of feet and inches, in which the vendor may occupy the street. This publication makes visible the compounding pressures that limit the vendors’ use of space that would otherwise be difficult to determine--to quantify space that is allowed to be used on the sidewalk. Space in this instance is representative and the resultant of the political pressure and regulation. Because this “space” is not automatically visible and understood, how does one visualize and analyze space in other scenarios?

The Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu) The Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu) was created by Filip

Noterdaeme in 2002 to mock cultural establishments. The mission of the museum is to “subvert the increasingly impersonal, market-driven art world and expose the sellout of cultural institutions to commerce, cronyism, real estate, and star architects. HoMu exists in a state of perpetual flux and continues to defy the rules of the established art world.” (http://www.homelessmuseum.org/, n.d). The project does not have a concrete spatial location, manifesting and popping throughout the city in different spaces depending on the protest the artist is engaging. Looking at the HoMu, the artist engages the project with humor to execute strong and political art program pieces. Through these interventions, Noterdaeme questions an established art world and embracing the audience to think of alternatives.

Conflict Kitchen

Conflict Kitchen serves food from countries in which the USA is currently in conflict with. The concept is to sit around the table to discuss greater issues and engage the public in a political conversation. The restaurant changes its menu depending on the current geopolitical events (http://conflictkitchen.org/, n.d). The project uses food to open conversations and to bridge differences, and though it entirely revolves around food, the program tackles greater global issues. This is an event driven project that can be compared to street food vending as an everyday communicative transaction that bridges differences, creates

a way of commoning and uses public space to create active political citizenship. Understanding citizenship as more than the rights to participate politically, Conflict Kitchen addresses rights in the public realm as cultural, ethnical, socio-economical and civil rights (Holston and Appadurai 1999:15). This project opens a space to look beyond the materialized object into a program event idea.

Timberiche

project is powered by the Blue Houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to look beyond the object and the program, instead create a movement that encourages unity and collective pressuring for a socio-political change. Â Beyond the physical intervention, these case studies represent projects that open a space that empowers creativity and translates into an appropriation of space and a movement that generates a linkage with the community and public good.

Timberiche (2013) by FG Design Studio is a mobile

wellness unit that plans to help overcome the problems of health and

obesity Latino communities in Williamsburg and Bushwick now face. The project consists of small units that expand to create a network and system of operation. Through these units, the people of the neighborhood will gain basic health needs. In addition, the project becomes an educational tool that can move through space reaching communities where certain critical services currently are not present. Timberiche is a small project that brings great social significance, and though it has not been implemented and is still looking for funds, the idea of a program attached to an object looks beyond the materiality towards a strategy movement.

Blue House Jeanne van Heeswijk Lastly, The Blue House (2005) by Jeanne van Heeswijk is a project that uses an art house as a catalyst for social change. The house has been taken out of the market price for a period of time and used as a space where citizens could exchange and dialogue, research and develop to plan their future and the future of their town. This project is an example on how one space can carry into a whole process of social change. The house became the point of reflection of other issues, but at the same time it became the means for hopes and alternatives. Reflecting on the Blue House, The Vendors Vision Program uses street vending to create different alternative perceptions of public space and city by initiating a review of existing space and future appropriations. As community building occurs on the street, The Vendor Visions Program uses existing spaces to exchange knowledge, empower creativity and to visualize the act of commoning. The objective of this

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SUMMARY FOR THE DESIGN OF A NEW EQUIPMENT FOR STRANGERS

DESIGNING FOR THE CITY OF STRANGERS

WHY CRITICAL VEHICLES? DEF: “is an ‘ambitious’ and ‘responsible’ medium - a person or a piece of equipment- that attempts to convey ideas and emotions in the hope of transporting to each human terrain a vital judgment toward a vital change” (p. xvi)

History told by the powerful

CAN ONLY HAPPEN THROUGH A DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION Help strangers open-up

When the voice of the strangers is heard the city heals

Vehicles of hope and change History must be interrupted and be told by the nameless = strangers

Turning points in collective/singular consciousness

Non-strangers + strangers to bring themselves closer to the stranger’s experience and presence.

Wodiczko, K. (1999) Critical Vehicle: Writings, Projects, Interviews. Cambridge: MIT.

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Strangers and their relation to self and others need an artifice Object to open discussion, communication, identities, visions

= Immigrants instrument

Must be from the immigrant

Overcome fear (companion) Give power (display)

Must attract people and strangers closer

* Achieving such goals will increase Must be magical, Be able to show bizarre, curious stranger’s concerns objects communicative abilities (p.13)

+ immigrants

“It is up to these newcomers, then, to transform and unbuilt the cities by inserting their presence, their performances, and their histories into the collective memories and democratic discourses of the city itself.” (p.7)

This histories the injustices of the present

5 Help strangers make transition to non-strangers while recognizing its own strangeness

Must be transitional object (Winnicott) and Communicative artifice ( Krisleva) Playful distance, playful contact

Must be patient +doctor: self healing + heal others

CRITICAL DESIGN

THE HOMELESS VEHICLE PROJECT

ROSALYN DEUTSCHE As a project, it is not a finish product, rather a starting point

DEF: Mirror of society Points and spaces of convergences for a multitude of internal and external inquiries

Healing society psychological and physical wounds

Fullfill the need of homeless people (transportation + shelter)

Collaborative

Design: weapon as an act of resiliance Performative articulation

scandalize Alerts creating critical judgment towards present-past securing future.

“imployes design to illustrate social reality, supporting the right of these froups to refuse marginalization” (p.106)

Mobility Refugee

creates hope NOT

Symbolic representation

Develop with them and based on critical inquiries of the produced crisis

Things taken into consideration Mobility Safety Varients Test (open discussions, practical suggestions, critical comments, new concerns, ideas)

Functionalism

SOCIALLY CREATED SCANDAL

A visual analogue to everyday objects of consumption and merchandising (p.83)

Aid in creating a legitimized status for its users in the community of the city (p.83)

EXAMPLE: BANDAGE

Practical

The vehicle functions as bridge of empathy between observers and homeless individuals (p.83)

GOALS

Must show the real world not camouflage it, questions today’s society (un mask)

Useful

Signifying purpose

GIVES VOICES

Weapon

Not only the abstract space (control + profit -Lefebvre) create the city but those who appropriate it (p.106)

Deutsche, R (1996). Evictions: art and spatial politics. Graham Foundation for Advance Studies in the Fine Arts; MIT Press. Pp. 49-107 (Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City)

Wodiczko, K. (1999) Critical Vehicle: Writings, Projects, Interviews. Cambridge: MIT.

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Research & Fieldwork The Vendors Vision Program has been executed in two different stages and with the help of our partner organization Vamos Unidos. Vamos Unidos is an immigrant street vendor organization that seeks to address problems revolving around street food vending including issues of immigration and social justice. With this partnership, we were able to build a relationship with street vendors and have access to many of their internal information. The first stage consisted of fieldwork in Roosevelt Avenue, observing and interviewing neighborhood stakeholders, including street vendors, organizations supporting or opposing the Jackson Heights-Corona Business Improvement District, and the BIDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s project manager, Seth Taylor. Through the lens of informal, everyday urbanities, and more specifically through the focus of street food vending, these various methods of fieldwork sought to understand the

friction between the regulated and controlled entities of public space, and the emerging informalities within them. Fieldwork began in September 2013 with weekly visits to the site and continued until May 2014. This fieldwork included: eighteen recorded, formal interviews, three focus groups that took place during a Vamos Unidos monthly meeting, and three presentations of the project to the street vending community and multiple on the ground conversations. Because of the sensitivity of the practice of street vending, many of these conversation were not allowed to be recorded. These narratives were not counted as being part of the interviews because many of the questions in the semi-structured interviews could not be addressed. Nonetheless, these conversations were taken into consideration and the responses shaped the project.

LIGHT

PROTECTION

BRANDING

LOCATION

COLLECTIVITY

STORAGE

SEATING

MOBILITY/TIME

ASSET

After compiling inteviews and immense observation, this describes a matrix of met/unmet needs in vending in parallel to law. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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The entirety of the vendor interviews were completely while the vendor was at work, consequentially contributing to the firsthand understanding of how the business functions and its affective relations to its surroundings. Conducting the interviews in the vendor’s workspace accommodated the vendor’s time and schedule. Majority of the vendors sell for long periods of time, every day of the week. However, when the vendor is not at work on the street, the vendor is elsewhere preparing food or spending time with their families. For these reasons, even though various activities occurred at the same time as the interview, it was a more accessible time for the vendor to contribute to the project. In parallel, a comprehensive research on the laws and regulations of street vending and ecology of this practice in New York City has structured the framework for the project. With the production of maps, actors and stakeholders’ diagrams, and historical timelines, we were able to understand the complexity behind the issue and to visualize all the components and connections comprehending this practice in relation to the current situation in Roosevelt Avenue. Through this fieldwork, analysis, and theoretical investigation, a more thorough understanding of the political ecology of food vending and proceeding was gained to provide a foundation for the project. The second stage of the project has been a multiple iteration process that involves the re-imagining of the cart, creating programming that encourages residents to act politically, and strategizing a movement that strives for social change. With street vendors, Roosevelt Avenue residents and local business owners, we have organized workshops and presentations to develop these various levels of the project. The design process starts as an active conversation through different workshops to captivate various perspectives. The workshops were a part of the monthly meeting Vamos Unidos in alternating boroughs. We have presented our project in Queens and Brooklyn. Through these workshops and presentations, we have gathered information concerning the needs and awareness that the vendors want to educate the public. Using latex gloves as a relational object, the meeting then opened to a discussion of vending and the vendor’s need, desires, and messages they hoped to communicate. In response to the latex gloves, the vendors related to their everyday and started 52 | The Vendors Vision Program

talking about the struggles they encounter as well as their motivations. As we listened to their conversations, it was encouraging to hear their motivations going beyond the economical but tied to identity, culture, and family. We have recorded each presentation and interview, translated them and transcribed them into a book we titled: “Transcribing Narratives”. This book has helped us to understand and to spatialize in depth the situation many vendors have and to look at the complexity of these practices. By compiling all the interviews in a book, we have been able to compare and draw relations between the different vendors. Though most of our presentations have been developed primarily for street vendors, we have had the opportunity to present our project in two different occasions to different activists, architects, and theorists. The first workshop took place under the thematic hub of “Political Ecologies” at the “Structures for Inclusion” symposium hosted by The New School and Design Corps on March 22nd, 2014. The second presentation, was convened by Superfront’s spring conversations under the talk: “What/Where/Whose Public” on April 29, 2014. These opportunities to share and exchange knowledge to multiple audiences fed directly into the development of a program and movement centered around the cart in The Vendors Vision Program.

Russian Jews: Garment Industry 1916: Zoning Resolution Sale: $8 price per sq. ft. Rent: $40/month The Surge In Demand For Housing, World War I

German, Russian, Jews, Polish, Greek, Italian 1760 1761 Thirty minute law

1850-1870 1858 Ah Ken peddles 'awful' cigars for 3 cents apiece from little stalls along the City Hall Park fence. 1870, sidewalk ordinance in San Francisco outlaws Chinese 'pole-peddling' of goods.

1880

1890

1880-1935 Tolerance?

1894 Veterans law

1886 First Puscart Market

1890-1940 Progressive Era Activist “the Pushcart Evil”

1900 1906 Conflict between the proposal for three public markets versus a two story building with roof gardens NYT 1907 Concern for the peddler and decision not enforce open air markets

1910 1915 END of 30 minute law 1916 All licenses expire

1924 Congress passed the National Origins Act, restricting the flow of immigrants based on their place of origin. Sale: $15 price per sq. ft. Rent: $60/month The “Roaring Twenties” 1920 Great Depression Faces Change: More US Born Vendors 1928 Limit of licenses

NYT 1912: Pushcart Cart Question Reduced to Politics

1930’s LaGuardia’s war on pushcarts

NYT 1912: Aldermen Indorse Pushcart Markets

Dawn of the automobile age - No more place for pushcarts in LES

NYT 1912: Pushcart Markets a United Demand NYT 1918: Demand Pushcarts as aid for poor

NYT 1932: Acts to clean up pushcar markets

1942 Shortage of farm workers: Bracero program

1961 Zoning Resolution: Privately Owned (POPS) 1960 Moses vs Jacobs

1940 African Immigration from the South Sale: $5 price per sq. ft. Rent: $45/month The 1929 Stock Market Crash And the “The Great Depression” 1930

1945 end of WW2: Wave of Puerto Ricans migrate Sale: $8 price per sq. ft. Rent: $50/month World War II 1940

1986 The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)

1965 Hart-Cellar Act: ends discrimination based on national origin

Sale: $12 price per sq. ft. Rent: $60/month The Post-World War II + Housing Boom 1950

Sale: $25 price per sq. ft. Rent: $200/month First Condo Buildings + World’s Fair + Building Boom 1960

1976 Special Assessment District (SAD) 1970s Nixon’s New Federalism 1976 New York “Bankruptcy” Sale: $45 price per sq. ft. Rent: $335/month World Trade Center Completed Near Bankruptcy, finished strong 1970

1979-1980: Reagan Thatcher privatization 1984 First BID: Union Square 1983 Public Forum Doctrine Sale: $250 price per sq. ft. Rent: $1,700/month From Recession to Lofts + The Silicon Alley Dot Com Boom 1980

Sale: $590 price per sq. ft. Rent: $3,200/month Co-op Conversion Boom + Black Monday Stock Market Crash 1990

1987: Street Peddler Task Force 1988 Cap on licenses NYT 1988: Acts to clean up pushcart market

IMMIGRATION

1996 The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act

1990's Giuliani’s campaign against street vendors on125th Street NYT 1993: Acts to clean up pushcart market NYT 1997: Pushcarts May Be Pushed Out NYT 1998: Opinion from SUZANNE WASSERMAN: "Let Vendors Pay for Sidewalk Space; Another Pushcart War"

PUBLIC SPACE

Sale: $1,200 price per sq. ft. Rent: $3,800/month

Sale: $1,700 price per sq. ft. Rent: $3,500/month

Quick Rebound + Tax Credit 9/11 Housing Boom to Lehman + Housing Seasons 2000

2006 Mayor Bloomberg quadrupled fines for street vendors to $1000 2008 Mayor Bloomberg Implements Green Cart Initiative 2008 Crackdown on vendors around World Trade Center 2009 Center for Urban Pedagogy and Street Vendor Project Create the Vendor Power Tool

LAND COST REAL ESTATE

2010 2013 Citibike displaces street vendors

STREET FOOD

DN 2012: Harlem street vendor says tickers from NYPD are unfair; ‘I was treated better when I sold drugs.’ DN 2013: Meet the three Brooklyn food vendors the city says are the dirtiest 2010 Vamos Unidos 2011 Food Truck Association

History of street food vending through 5 lenses. Diagram by: Jonathan Lapalme, Sabrina Dorsainvil, Gabrielle Andersen, Andrew Tucker, Cristina Handal, Bonnie Netel and Jessica Kisner Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Processwork & Sketches After looking at the theories of public space and the regulations that govern the practice of street food vending, the process of design took various forms that led to looking at the umbrella as the only point of possible intervention allowed by the law. How the umbrella is perceived, used and lived is related to they way the cart is placed on the street and how that street is connected to ideas of publicness. This relates directly to memory, imaginaries, belonging and rituals. Through these lenses, the umbrella becomes a productive tool in the conversation for social change in the public.

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[TYPES OF INTERVENTION-MATRIX] SPATIAL

RELATIONAL OBJECT

UMBRELLA

Ceruzzi & Murphy

[TYPES OF INTERVENTION-MATRIX] DETOURNAMENT

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REFLECTIVE

[LA PEQUE]

She has been in this corner for over 26 years. She is worried about her future if the BID is to happen.

Wants to change her umbrella and wants to tell people her experiences raising her family in NYC.

[MARTHA]

Came to USA to look for better opportunities for her 9 children. She is proud of being a vendor...

...but some laws and regulations give her a hard time. The gloves burn her hands but she still needs to wear them or she will get a ticket. Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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Bibliography Article §81.31: Overhead protection. Cooking equipment and utensils shall be covered by lids or larger overhead protections such as a tent, canopy, umbrella or other device Barlet, J. (2013, September 12). Some protest Roosevelt Avenue business improvement district. Queens Chronicle. Retrieved from http://www.qchron.com/editions/ western/some-protest-roosevelt-avenue-business-improvement-district/ article_dde428bc-0150-5a58-b4c9-8d1eb3636e6f.html Buchanans, R (1985). Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice. In: Design Issue, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring) pp. 4-22 Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511524 Conflict Kitchen, (n.d). Retrieved Febuary, 2014 from, www.conflictkitchen.org Demand Pushcarts as aid for the poor; Return of Cheap System of Food Distribution to be Tried in This City.(1918, February 5). Retrieved December 15, 2013, from http://query. nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10BEFA3B5B11738DDDAC0894DA405

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Robles-Duran, M. (2013). For the Brief moments of Confrontation. In Ferguson, Urban Drift Project in cooperation with the Berlin Senate for Urban Development (Eds.), Make Shifts City, Renegotiating the Urban Common. Berlin: Jovis Publishers Roosevelt Avenue Community Alliance. (n.d) Retrieved from, http://rooseveltavenue.org/?page_ id=586 Sánchez, A. I. (2013, February 5). Immigrant entrepreneurship and the city. QueensLatino. Retrieved from http://www.queenslatino.com/ Smith, N. (1992). Contours of a Spatialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the production of geographical Scale. In Social Text, No. 33 (1992), pp. 54-81. Duke University Press. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466434 Sukkah City (2010). Retrieved April 10, 2014 from, http://www.sukkahcity.com/ Timberiche FG Design Studio (2013, Oct. 9) In: The Urban Omnibus. Retrieved April 29, 2014 Maintaining Place through Active Citizenship & Street Food Vending

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