Vote to Bring East Coast Street-Food Fest to San Francisco

We observed the work of New York-based Street Vendor Project firsthand late last year, when director Sean Basinski kindly let SFoodie sit in on a workshop designed to educate prospective entrepreneurs on the difficult and complicated legalities of setting up a street-based business in New York City. Basinski, a lawyer, is a passionate advocate for the more than 10,000, largely immigrant street vendors in the Big Apple; for six months he was even one himself, hawking burritos on the streets of Manhattan. For the past six years, he has further honored the hard work of these people through a street-food festival, the Vendy Awards, which Basinski now hopes to host in other cities across the country.    

Watch Basinski's short video explanation of the goal and then vote for the Vendy Awards (via the Pepsi Refresh Project's "Refresh Everything" contest) to hit the road and head west. The top 10 ideas selected receive $25,000 towards reaching the creative goal.

While we don't officially know that San Francisco would be a destination, we have heard from La Cocina director Caleb Zigas that he and Basinski have an open dialogue about how to collaborate on national street-food related ideas, be it festival or conference, so it wouldn't be a far-fetched guess. We'll just try to conveniently overlook how many amazing food trucks there are in Los Angeles right now.