On Saturdays and Sundays from April to late October the ball fields of Red Hook Park come alive with soccer players, their fans, and the legendary pan-Latin Red Hook Food Vendors. For decades the vendors operated on the edges of the park selling their home-cooked wares—fire-grilled corn dusted with salty cotija cheese, chile and lime-doused mango slices, enormous freeform tortillas known as huaraches, and ceviche among other Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Colombian, Dominican and Ecuadorian specialties. In an age of convenience cooking, the Red Hook vendors prepare traditional recipes from scratch, no shortcuts. Today the Red Hook Food Vendors Association boasts three Vendy Award winners among its members. For ethnic food lovers, the sheer concentration of delicious diversity is unparalleled.
Originally settled by the Dutch in the 1600s, Red Hook was a bustling industrial neighborhood and shipping center until the 1960s, when the dock jobs dried up and unemployment and crime rose. By the late ’80s LIFE magazine called the neighborhood “the crack capital of America.” It was in this depressed environment that the ball fields came to be. Red Hook happened to be the home of one of only a few fields in New York large enough to accommodate the semi-professional soccer leagues of the recent Central and South American immigrants. “This was the center of the soccer playing scene in Brooklyn,” says César Fuentes, Executive Director of the Red Hook Food Vendors Association. The vending scene began in 1974, a spontaneous outgrowth of the Liga Guatemala, the most competitive and popular of the four soccer ligas that played in Red Hook. Soccer drew crowds, and the earliest of the Red Hook vendors—some of them spectators themselves—recognized an opportunity. Equipped only with a table, a grill, ingredients and perhaps a tarp for shade, these original vendors offered created flourishing family businesses. Success attracted competitors. Before long, the ball fields had grown into an open-air food market similar to those one might find in Central and South America. The food was fresh and inexpensive and captured flavors of the homelands the vendors and their customers had left behind. The Red Hook vendors thrived. And by the late ’90s the ball fields were discovered by foodies who ventured out to the remote neighborhood specifically for the cheap, authentic eats.
For over three decades the ball fields enjoyed minimal interference from city regulators. Fierce competition ensured quality control; vendors serving excellent food were rewarded with long lines, subpar vendors found themselves replaced by those who could do better. But when gentrification ultimately came to Red Hook, the vendors faced the threat of extinction. The upscale supermarket, Fairway, moved into the neighborhood as did furniture superstore IKEA. As the neighborhood grew tonier, the humble market didn’t fit some people’s vision for a revitalized Red Hook. After decades of being effectively unregulated by the city, in 2007, changes in the permitting requirements for the park forced the vendors to have to bid to retain the permits they had held for years and increased enforcement by the Department of Health caused the vendors to invest in mandated costly mobile units—carts and trucks. Led by César, a grassroots movement to “Save the Soccer Taco” rallied. The vendors began their 2008 season with a long-term permit, but the feel was different. Gone were the weathered tarps and tables. Gone, too, were some of the vendors unable or unwilling to make the changes and afford the significant investment to upgrade to a truck or cart. Once again the vendors are gearing up for a fight to remain at the ball fields. Their six-year vending permit is up for renewal in 2013 and nothing is guaranteed. As César puts it “The big question is, ‘are we going to be able to be around for the next six years?’”
