I was in NYC yesterday. I wanted to see Lunch Hour NYC at the Public Library, but I missed it by one day. I was really bummed. They had a full replica of the original Automat! And there was information about how lunch grew up side by side with industrialization in New York.

It’s hard to avoid street food when you’re in New York. It’s part of what makes walking around there so interesting. The carts are part of the landscape of the sidewalks. You see and smell hot dog carts, pretzel carts, the Tasti-D-Lite trucks. There’s the great dosa man in Washington Square Park. And there are all the halal carts and the falafel and schwarma carts. This one was right in front of the movie theater we went to in the West Village. There must be over 1000 of them in the city. Does anyone know how they get to their spots each day?

FOOD TRUCK 101: THE CONFERENCE is Thursday, 2/28. Sales end at midnight. Culinary anthropologist Merry White, who writes really interesting articles and books about food, and journalist Christine Liu, who organized the first food truck festival in Boston, are both speaking. Tickets are on sale here until midnight tonight.

EDIT: I’m extending ticket sales to end of the day today (2/26). So many people signed up while I was asleep last night that I figured we could take signups for another few hours.