I’m a fan of the growing food truck scene here in New York City. It started out first as a homegrown love for your classic street vendor carts [read my post from August]. It was a beautiful Memorial Day and thanks to reading the print version of Time Out NY, my girlfriend and I knew about the kickoff event for BKYLN Yard (formerly known simply as the Yard) called Parked [read the Grub Street article].

Find Your Local Food Trucks There are a few good ways to track the food trucks here in NYC.  One is Tweat.it which gives you a map overlay of locations and there is Mobile Cravings which is broken down into 16 different cities.

When you see the area where the BKLYN Yard is located you wouldn’t  think that there would be a fun public space that hosts events summer long.  It was once the industrial hub of Brooklyn. The body of water on which it resides may look lovely but it will kill you.  This is infamous Gowanus Canal. Originally built in 1867 by widening the natural body of water and turning into an industrial commerical waterway.  The story does not get better over time.  They chose the cheapest design possible.  This design had no through-flow of water and thus the waste could not be pushed out. In April 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed that the canal be listed as a Superfund cleanup site.  Meaning that it is toxic.

Despite the fact that the water will kill you the location is quaint [see photos below].  There was a good collection of trucks and even carts. I won’t lie, the presence of the carts was disturbing.  I thought it was a food truck party.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the carts.  Pizzamoto was there and I love that cart. They built a cart iron wood burning brick oven mounted on a small flatbed trailer [see photos at Yelp!]. This is something I would try to do.  Then it would burn to the ground and I’d rebuild it.  I’ve seen them at the outdoor Brooklyn Flea.  And Van Leeuwen ice cream took advantage of the situation by having a cart inside and then parking their truck outside.  But where was everyone else?  Not that the space was huge but this party leaned heavy on the desert side.  Not only did the Desert Truck make a rare appearance (it no longer roams the mean streets-they opened a store!) there but so was Wafels & Dinges, The Cinnamon Snail, Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies and Robicelli’s Cupcakes.  There was some savory.  Rickshaw brought one of their dumpling trucks. There was NYC Cravings, a Taiwanese truck and you could wash it all down with a drink from The Green Pirate juice truck.

The event may have been leaning towards desert but that did not stop the hordes.  We showed up as the gate opened but within the hour the lines formed.  I grabbed a key lime pie on a stick (big fan!) and we were on our way back to take a look at that amazing bridge we walked over.  Wondering to myself, “how many people have walked over this today and have no idea how significant this bridge is?”.  It’s the Carroll St. Bridge.  Built in 1889 by the Brooklyn Department of City Works.  Back before the unification when Brooklyn was a still a separate city.  It’s one of two retractile bridges and one of only four left in the United States.  A retractile bridge does not raise up or pivot on a fixed point to opent the waterway.  Rather it slides on a rail and pulled by cables. It’s one of the oldest bridges in the entire cityYou can Google it to find a few websites with historical facts.  I’m an amateur City historian and a big fan of Forgotten NY.

[flickrset id=”72157624058902509″ thumbnail=”square” overlay=”true” size=”medium”]  Food, food truck, foodie, gowanus, trucks