San Francisco Will Never Be Portland When It Comes to Street Food

One of Portland’s pods. Photo: The Courtyard/Flickr

Jonathan Kauffman gives us a good little investigative piece today in which he reveals a simple fact that should have been apparent to us sooner: The reason Portland has a booming food-truck pod scene and we don’t is because they have way more empty private land in the densest parts of town. Or, rather, the city simply isn’t as dense or developed as San Francisco or Oakland. As Kauffman writes, “the city blocks are a checkerboard of buildings and parking lots,” and it’s the private owners of those parking lots who quickly figured out that leasing space to food trucks was more profitable to them than leasing it to cars, thus the boom. They also don’t have the kind of high-priced lunch spots paying Financial-District rents who would put up a stink over a little friendly competition. And the dream of the 90s is still alive there. But we digress. [SFoodie]