St. Patrick's Day Citations Hit Drinkers, Food Trucks

So what do you get when you cross a no-refusal weekend, with a Mark Cuban-funded parade, a block partay and St. Patrick's Day?

In terms of Dallas Police Department stats, you get what you might expect: A rise in DWI and public intox. arrests from last year, but fewer towed cars and parking tickets. The latter could surely be the result of RPO restrictions in effect or people actually using public transportation and shuttle service. The former just be Dallas trying to best itself one more time. Oh, and two food trucks were found to not be up to code. Eek.

There's an interesting nugget, though, regarding the pop-up food truck park that set up shop on Lowest Greenville in Future Trader Joe's-ville.

Avi Adelman of Barking Dogs says in his St. Pat's wrap-up on Pegasus News:

The much ballyhooed food truck event on the Arcadia site was the real fun part. The event was so hastily organized that neighboring businesses -- the ones who might lose money to transient food sales -- had not even heard about it until Thursday. The City's Office of Special Events refused to force Madison Partners to secure a special event permit, which this very easily qualified for (large crowds, parking on unimproved surfaces, sale of merchandise).

And guess what, that permit thing ended up being a big ol' clusterfuck considering this:

BD has learned Madison Partners, who organized this non-event event, was cited for illegal land use about five minutes after the trucks went in. That means they will never get a special event permit for any more events here, but that is kinda confusing since the city's OSE did not think they needed a special event permit. Are you following this?

To answer that question, nope. Doesn't make sense, that is, unless ... everyone just assumed the officials out on Saturday would be ones after the drinky parade goers and not ones checking the permits of the trucks offering up belly-lining and sobering grub. Yeah, that could be the ticket. Literally.

· St. Patrick’s Day 2012 in Dallas [Pegasus News]
· St. Patrick's Day on Greenville Avenue, By the Numbers: Just How Hammered Were You? [Unfair Park]

Ruthie's was part of the food truck pop-up. [Photo: Ruthie's/Facebook]