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Meals, not wheels
04 Apr 2008, 1:25

Street-level parking lots are generally bad for urban areas. They're needed in the suburbs because, there, they're an essential part of the economy. Can you imagine a Wal-Mart without a parking lot? If they didn't provide a place for you to park, would you still shop there? And if they didn't provide a place for upstanding citizens to fall and shatter their hips, then who would the slippery curb lawyers serve? Walkability and tall buildings are to cities what the 15-minute drive and parking lots are to suburbs.

Even though downtown Portland handles its parking problem better than other cities—it has a fair number of underground and aboveground multi-level parking garages—there are still quite a few street-level parking lots where more big, beautiful buildings should be. Normally, parking lots dilute a city. Because they're not attractions, they're repositories. They sell vacancy. They deaden the block.

But not when in the space where could be cars are food carts. In the span of a block in downtown Portland, SW 5th between Oak and Stark, you're offered Mexican, Mediterranean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Russian, Polish, Indian, and Ethiopian foods. For cheap. I eat from a cart at least three times a week.

One of the carts (three, actually, at various spots around town) offers The Whole Bowl. I love these. And hate that there's a cart 2.5 blocks from my office. I might know a lot more about the area's restaurants, otherwise.

One drizzly afternoon, a colleague went to get one for herself. When she returned, she told us that some crazy girl on the street had yelled at her. From, like, half a block away. This girl was on the other side of the street, standing on the corner, yelling at my coworker "Are you as green as your sweater? Do you really think you're as green as your sweater? Huh? Are you??"

My coworker didn't know what to make of it. Green as her sweater? Crazies haranguing strangers on the street? I decided to investigate.

She didn't yell at me from halfway down the block. But she did smile at me halfway through the crosswalk. "Got a minute for the environment?"

She was working for Greenpeace that afternoon, trying to sign new members. Oh, I'm already on the Greenpeace emailing list, I said. Well, 50¢ a day and we'll stop the clearcutting of the rain forests, she said. Aw, lovely, but I'm poor, I said. Then I sniffed and wiped my nose. I'd rather it drip than grow. Ok, whatever, thanks anyway, she said, but don't use Kleenex tissues. They're the ones we're against.

I ordered a Whole Bowl with no sour cream and a pineapple soda. While she was making it, I asked the girl working the cart if she had any plans for the weekend. She told me she was fasting, a detox thing, and could only drink this concoction made with lemons and habanero peppers and other astringent juices. I wished her good luck and jaywalked across the street to avoid the Greenpeace girl.

But, karma caught me, at the corner diagonal from hers I met her partner. "Got a minute for the environment?" "Oh, I already talked to her," I said, and pointed across the intersection. And kept walking.