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Why endure vacation travel when you can get cuisine from five different countries at your nearest food truck corral? My family did just that a few weeks ago at Edgewood Eats, a rendezvous of food trucks each Monday evening in the semi-abandoned Edgewood strip mall in Palo Alto, California.

Aside from the fantastic food, this food truck meetup struck me as a particularly potent symbol of the birth of a new era within the old. The temporary, multi-ethnic, and movable feast contrasted sharply with the backdrop of the sadly-faded, stationary 1960s strip mall set in what once was a mostly white suburb. Only a wig shop and liquor store remained adding to the sense that time has moved on.

The gestalt of Edgewood Eats simultaneously saddened and excited me. The mall reminded me of the loss of a naive certainty in the American dream that pervaded the early sixties. That dream is dead, but I'm more excited than ever about the future that's unfolding before us. 

Go here for five mobile apps for finding food trucks in your area. And below is my smartphone photo essay of our staycation dinner at the food truck corral:

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Neal Gorenflo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neal Gorenflo | |

Neal Gorenflo is the co-founder and board president of Shareable, an award-winning nonprofit news, action network, and consultancy for the sharing transformation. An epiphany in 2004 inspired Neal to


Things I share: Time with friends and family, stories, laughs, books, tools, ideas, nature, resources, passions, my network.