Almost every weekend I go by the pulga in the parking lot of the old Aquarius movie theater across the street from where Casita Jorge’s used to be. Almost every week I hope to get a picture of the truck selling Santa Rosa Queretaro carnitas, but it’s usually blocked by other stands. This week it was good and visible from a distance but it wasn’t possible to stop anywhere near there.

Although the latest hasn’t been covered in print anywhere I can find, it appears that the owner has at least for the time being resolved his difficulties with the city by devoting a large part of the lot to off-street parking instead of renting the space to people to set up booths and stalls. So now there’s much more vehicle parking there, but at least half of the commerce formerly conducted off the street has moved back out into the street and along the sidewalks all the way to the Walgreens on Riverside.

The streets around there are busier than ever. Now the parking lot’s just a bit less so. So the streets are more impassible than they were and probably some people have lost an important supplement to their income. The traffic-calming effect is miraculous, though; I bet the speed never tops 10 mph.