If I met you someday, I could tell you of the damages the fold-out table crowd in Mexico have done. Several years ago I went to Mexico City hoping to go to a famed over-100 year old Mexico City restaurant called Las Casuelas.
When we got there the restaurant was closed. The people selling food in carts from fold out tables had put them out of business.
I would say “harrumph” but here in LA, filled with Mexicans, they do this to established Taquerias. The people who pull up with a cooler and a half dozen bowls crowd around, you can barely walk. Of course, the business paying rent, insurance, etc, etc. cannot compete and go under.
Thank god the LAPD tries to take them down ASAP.
Every time the public gets a nanny, it turns into Nurse Ratched sooner or later.
The place that was a landmark, would have stayed a landmark had it deserved the distinction and people believed it. If it can be beat out by the porta-taco people it wasn’t that wonderful.
Frankly I wonder if there was more, such as “gang involvement.” That the place got threats that went beyond competition. If I ran such a place, I’d serve things that the porta-tacos could not match, in an atmosphere they could not match. People would gladly spend $60 and up for an evening there. But again that would depend on there not being gang sabotage and attempts to exact la mordida that way.