Food truck vendor to fight parking ruling

Alberto Loera's Mexican specialties of handmade corn tortillas, burritos and tamales are cooked inside his food truck -- the cornerstone of his dream restaurant.

Loera's culinary mission is to cook homemade Mexican meals and, he said, to offer "a bit of my culture of hospitality, which is to sell food that makes people happy."

With Patty's Tacos, Loera of Queens had established a loyal following on Manhattan's Upper East Side for nearly three years, much to the ire of some local residents and business owners at the busy commercial intersection of 86th Street and Lexington Avenue.

Elected officials started to get complaints when Loera began making food deliveries last year, triggering an NYPD crackdown with police enforcing a 1960s parking meter regulation that makes it illegal to feed a meter and stay parked in one spot all day.

Loera was blitzed with tickets and tows, was arrested late last year and his truck seized. He went to jail for 24 hours on a disorderly conduct charge, was released and had his truck returned to him.

Now Loera intends to appeal a judge's decision that the regulation against selling merchandise from metered parking spots also applies to food truck vendors.

Loera's lawyer Matt Shapiro said the meter parking regulation should only apply to vendor trucks that sell merchandise, not food.

Manhattan Councilman Daniel Garodnick, whose district includes the Upper East Side, said he believes Patty's Tacos was operating illegally.

"The sidewalks are public. No one can stake a claim on a public street -- this is a conflict of public access," Garodnick said.

"He [Loera] is taking up a parking space to conduct a business," said Garodnick, who believes the city needs to designate specific food truck vendor zones where trucks can park without violating meter parking regulations.

In the meantime, Loera is back at Lexington and 86th selling his delicacies after 7 p.m., when the meter regulation expires. Business, he said, is taking a big hit.

The crackdown on Patty's Tacos has had a ripple effect on other food truck vendors parked at meters who are also being ticketed. Food trucks have started to gather in parking lots to make sales, such as at the High Line parking lot on 33rd Street, and in Long Island City, said David Weber, president of the New York City Food Truck Association.

"We are looking for more safe vending location lots," he said. "We don't want to make it confrontational, and be in an adversarial role," said Weber, who owns four food vending trucks and two restaurants in New York City. "This is a real challenge."

Loera said he is staying put in the meantime. On Monday, he said he is still working at night selling his food on Lexington.

"It's worth the fight to be here and be able to work," he said.

Peter Mack, 21, of Brooklyn, said Loera's tacos sustain him through his work shift shelving stock at a nearby retail store at night.

"I just finished the carnita tacos," he said recently as he placed a second order. "They're pretty damn good."