Gourmet Food Truck Corner in Santa Monica Shut Down After One Day

• how sad? maybe next time you should follow the rules. it is very sad because your effort, money and time are wasted.

• Some Cities will accept trucks and work with them and there will be others that won't. Currently, most Cities have municiple codes that retrict the time that a truck can be at any given location and usually isn't more than 30 minutes. In a lot of places it's even less. The determining factor for the success of these trucks in a particular city will depend on how much presure and influence the local business' that compete with them have. Cities that have a strong busniess presence will most likely side with local busniess' as they have more at stake. If a truck puts a business or several busniess' under, that's money that they can't collect anymore for busniess licenses. And most truck owners don't even get busniness licenses since they in and out of a city so quickly. the truck owners might be more popular with the people, but if they don't come out in numbers to help the truck owners get more access, you can deffinetly bet the bussiness owners will come out in droves to ensure that they don't get comparable access. Smart restaurant owners who know who to change and adapt could easily compete with these trucks if they established their own truck vendor services. Especially if they're already popular. Current truck vendors have already done the leg work to establish that food trucks are no longer just roach coaches.

• Impeeding sidewalks,. leaving trash,.bringing down the neighborhood. If you had one of these parked in front of your house huge neon sign lit up,. you'd have a different opinion. Taking business away from people who respect laws and pay permits and taxes.

• @anonymous That's the free market. People choose and the ones that can't compete ge pushed to the side. Gov has no place telling somebody they can't do business cause somebody else can't keep up.

• Love the Food Trucks in general but my street in Venice is getting hit hard. I gotta say, the trucks trash the place and park right in front of restaurants that are even selling similar products. (Cupcakes in front of an ice cream place for example...) The lines block other retail clothing and jewelry businesses in our peak hours. We don't want to be bitchy but we pay huge rents and need our customers. Are there no regulations that apply here since the trucks don't seem to care? (When asked to leave they have been retaliating by dissing the businesses here on Twitter. So completely uncool!) We need help! How can we reach a compromise here?

• JonJon, I believe that is the case. The authorities came down with armed officers and somewhat misrepresented the zoning issue. When queried later about the discretionary powers of the Zoning Admin to make an exception, the bureaucrat in charge claimed that the SM City Attys had already determined w/ said Zoning Admin, prior to coming down, that there was no way to allow the activities to continue. That seems odd to make such a determination without any actual information. I think that the restaurant owners (and, really, why would they care about this location?) have an uphill battle because the people like the trucks and the landlord knows people on both sides of Montana. Given the paucity of restaurants and the types of uses in the vicinity, there really is no rational argument to not allow the activity outside of protectionism of a minority. It may take time and pressure but I think the forces of good will win on this one.

• Sounds like a few local restaurants have weighed in and got their lawyers onto it...

• My co-workers and I were all set to enjoy a food truck extravaganza today. It's a shame that it got shut down. Hopefully instead of just throwing up roadblocks to an innovative (and delicious) idea the bureaucrats in Santa Monica will offer some helpful solutions to the zoning issues. It does not make sense that the trucks can legally congregate on the street and hawk their tasty wares but they cannot congregate in a parking lot (which is the same except, this way, they and their customers do not end up taking up the limited street parking available in Santa Monica). I'm hopeful that if a few City Council members were to partake of the delights of such trucks as Fry Smith, Gastrobus and others, they could find it in their hearts (and their handy zoning-law-making pens) to rezone the parking lot so that it could be used for feeding an area that has a dearth of food selections.

• This is so sad especially in todays economy, here it is somebody comes up with a great idea for all these great lunch trucks to be everyday and here comes "The Man" again to ruin it for everybody, instead of trying to help out and maybe find more vacant lots in the city, they shut it down! Oh well, its back to the streets for the trucks, its ok because u cant deny good inexpensive food, people will still follow them on twitter and they will still be successful.

• Yibin Shen, Deputy City Attorney, sounds like a smart guy.

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