America’s two biggest cities are in a pissing match over who can use police to manhandle immigrant food workers harder. New York City’s De Blasio started it by singling out restaurant delivery workers using e-bikes, invoking “safety”, even though there is no evidence that e-bikes cause fatal crashes –  unlike cars, which De Blasio recommends these workers use instead.

Lest it get omitted from the tacit immigrant bashing circuit, Los Angeles is now punishing one of its few affordable culinary icons: the streetside taco stand. On October 19, LA city and county employees raided one such stand, Avenue 26 Tacos, dispersing the crowd and seizing their equipment. Thankfully, by the next evening, the stand was back and ready for another night of carne asada and al pastor. As ever, the officials’ enforcement  is opaque and bewildering.

The humble taco stand is a microcosm of good urbanism – with a minimum of equipment and space, a few jobs are created and dozens if not hundreds of people get a cheap, delicious meal. While rivals fear-monger about food safety, I’ve yet to hear of any confirmed links to food poisoning. That compares well with that other giant of Mexican cuisine, Chipotle.

The taco stands consistently appear on forlorn boulevards, as beacons of urbanism in a city plagued by an absence of it. Where pavement sat vacant and barren, they now teem with hungry, then satisfied, people. The humble lure of tacos animates the urbanist bible prophecy, “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets” (Zechariah 8:4).

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