Birth of the food cart pods
https://www.pdxmonthly.com/eat-and-drink/2016/08/how-the-food-cart-pod-people-took-over
By late April 2009, with dance parties erupting and the blogosphere buzzing,
“Cartopia,” the country’s first rock ’n roll food-cart corral was up and positively running. In May,
The New York Times showed up. In his “Frugal Portland” piece, writer Matt Gross salivated over the city’s affordable gastronomy and budding street-food scene: “As a New Yorker, I was jealous … overjoyed at what I could find within a single pod.” After that, all hell broke loose. Lines formed before the windows opened. Every night was a party.
Thirty-five days after opening, Abbott was a cover boy in
The Mercury, a local alternative weekly. Calls came fast and furious from journalists, cart hopefuls, and curious city officials from around the country; Knox delisted his phone number. Everyone who saw the place was equally shocked and smitten.
Tourists swelled, The Food Channel knocked, and camera crews became as familiar as take-out boxes. Within a year, Portland’s cart-housing project spread to other neighborhoods, revitalizing forgotten concrete and dirt plots with urban life and budding entrepreneurial dreams.
“Nationally, we made something happen,” says Knox. “People craved an outdoor space that wasn’t corporatized. That image of hundreds of people of all stripes hanging out, talking and eating, wandering around a parking lot strung with lights. It hit on something pop culture didn’t allow. It put ripples through the country.”
