ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to the people who helped make this book possible.

Adam Whalen, thank you for insisting that I go with you that beautiful fall day in September 2010 to eat lunch at a food cart for the very first time in my life. My life is very different because of that day, and I am very grateful.

Al Gallo, thank you for all the inspiration and encouragement you have given me for the past twenty-five years or more.

Ken Wilson, thank you for being a terrific food cart wingman and for designing the Portland Food Cart Adventures logo, business cards and so on.

Kevin Brusett, thank you for providing me with life-changing, brand-legitimizing T-shirts.

Tiffany Harelik, thank for being kind enough to sit with me outside a food cart at a picnic table and listen to me tell you about the hopes I had to write a food cart book. Your “You can write that book, and I am happy to help you any way I can” comment meant more to me than you will ever know.

Many thanks to Molly Woodstock and Ken Wilson for helping out with taking some of photos found in this book. My deadline was looming, and you both came through.

Thank you to Pro Photo Supply and your awesome man behind the counter, Kevin, for helping me learn to take real photos with a real camera.

Lori Nold, thank you for all the care and kindness you provided my family and I over the summer, fall and winter of 2013. I don’t think that I could have done this book without you.

Thank you to the people in my Dream Stoker Nation community and to all of my Facebook friends! The support you gave me as I worked on this book night after night was invaluable.

Thank you to my History Press commissioning editors Aubrie Koenig and Will McKay, as well as my production editor Ryan Finn. You were all awesome and incredibly helpful.

Thank you to the guys at CityTeam for putting up with my many absences at the end of 2013 as I finished up this book.

Thank you to Zayne Shomler for spending many Saturdays with me in the fall of 2013 as I took hundreds and hundreds of food cart photos. You were a big help, and I enjoyed spending those days with you so much.

Thank you to Zac, Zayne and Zoe Shomler for your ongoing encouragement and being understanding all those times that dad was monopolizing the computer so he could write.

Thank you to the bootstrap chefs featured in this book for trusting me with your precious stories. Much love to each of you.

Lastly and most importantly, thank you to my lovely wife, Gayla, for always believing in this book and in my dream to be an author and a speaker.