“This is the best ice cream ever,” North Charleston artist Nicole Greenberg said as she finished off a scoop she’d purchased from Coconut Glen’s, one of the vendors who participated in Street Food Stories, a food truck rally hosted on behalf of The Food Section. “I love finding out about places in my community.”
Greenberg was at last Saturday’s event because The Food Section had commissioned her to customize saltshakers for attendees. The whole idea behind Street Food Stories was to demonstrate how this publication can enhance eating experiences, so sending folks home with gear to make seasoning more fun seemed like the ideal freebie arrangement. Greenberg painted shrimp, berries, and—by 11-year-old Eleanor Hertzler’s request—a can of beans.
Unfortunately, most of Greenberg’s shakers went unpainted. A thunderstorm started creeping toward Charleston about 30 minutes before the party was scheduled to start, prompting local meteorologists to deem it “time to find some cover”—which apparently isn’t weather-speak for an open field alongside a convenience store. Attendance was a tiny fraction of our most conservative projection.
Still, the gathering was successful in almost every way. People discovered new food favorites, as Greenberg attested, and learned from volunteer sommelier Sarah O’Kelley about wines they loved. They shared pizzas topped with local peaches and gaped at the cheese pulled from Korean corndogs. Our generous host, Jadoon’s Park Circle Market, got enough extra traffic from the pageant to see it through a rainy night.
In other words, The Food Section proved its value, as planned. We fostered connections! We sparked ideas! We championed upstanding small businesses! Yet the audience for this exhibition was so small that instead of collecting hundreds of email addresses, we gleaned 14.
As for subscriptions, we didn’t sell one.
Fortunately, the beauty of the digital marketplace is you can show your support no matter what the weather. We can’t stage Street Food Stories again. But we can keep an associated promo going.
In the name of building up our email list, we’re today offering a free one-month subscription to anyone who isn’t yet on The Food Section’s rolls. And if you supply the new email address, you’ll also receive a one-month subscription (or a free one-month extension if you’re already on a paid plan. Thank you for your support!) Note: This deal is good only on Friday, July 18.
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