Pushcart City

Food trucks, pushcarts, whatever you call them,  are a lot more popular now than before the pandemic hit. But my remembrance of them was long before we had gourmet foods to choose from on street corners. And December carries my earliest memories of push carts.

As I child, I knew one thing about the city of Manhattan: it was unmistakably itself. The first thing I noticed once my parents parked their car and we all got out was the smell. Chestnuts, hot dogs, pretzels--these were the foods that entered my nostrils immediately. These three treats seemed to be on every street corner, and you couldn't get away from them. 

I almost always begged for one of them, and typically we got pretzels because my mom thought hot dogs weren't good for us. When I got older, I pleaded for chestnuts and loved how warm they felt in my hand. Later still, I was fine with coffee and liked walking with it down long avenues in the winter cold.

Today in Manhattan, the food truck food is way more advanced and flavorful. But there's something about those early childhood memories that won't let go and wants to return to the days when hot dogs, chestnuts and pretzels meant New York City to me. 

It may have also been the feeling that my parents, just by virtue of being mine, could help me navigate the vast, cavernous, anonymous streets of New York. That we would be seeing relatives who loved us, friends who would throw open their doors, movies on giant screens and plays that would lure me into wanting to jump on stage alongside the actors. 

New York was my first introduction to the excitement the world could offer. It started with the push cart smells, which quickly gave way to more interesting possibilities: Broadway, the Rainbow Room, comedy clubs, cafes, the Bitter End where Dylan played, the Village Gate, highrise apartments, fancy restaurants, cabarets, singers, the Rockettes, Central Park and Rockefeller Center. 

New York was, and still is, the place where everything is possible.

I'm not there this year, but the next time I go in December I'm going to hunt down some chestnuts and eat them on a street corner. Just for remembrance sake--and for the little girl whose eyes widened every time she stepped out of a car, bus or subway onto a Manhattan street. 

Still wide eyed. Just not showing it.

Push cart vendor: Dan de Luca