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Food Fight: Are Restaurant Owners Blocking Parking Spaces on Wilshire?
A food truck serves customers on Wilshire Blvd. | Photo by polaroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
The civil war between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants in the Miracle Mile seems to be kicking into high gear. LAist has received a few observations from readers stating that passenger vehicles are now taking up all the parking spaces on the 5700 block of Wilshire Boulevard, staying there all day and getting ticketed. There's no confirmation that these vehicles are from restaurants, but workers in the area are suspicious. Here's one e-mail that we received:
There have been fewer and fewer trucks outside in the past couple of weeks. Apparently, certain drivers (workers at the bricks and mortar restaurants perhaps?) are parking their cars at the meters outside 5700 and leaving them there ALL DAY. You can tell something fishy is going down, because when you walk along the sidewalk at lunchtime, every single car has a parking ticket. It's ironic, because Councilman Tom LaBonge - who's introduced legislation against the food trucks - has claimed that part of the problem is that the food trucks don't obey parking restrictions and treat them as merely a business expense. Now it looks like the restaurants are doing the same
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