You can register them in some states, but not in all, and in many cases they’re not allowed on highways:
The wave of registration bans on kei trucks is spreading across states like Georgia, New York, Maine, and Rhode Island, among others. Each state has its own set of rules and regulations, which have made the registration process a daunting task for kei truck owners. These bans primarily stem from concerns regarding whether the vehicles comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
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“By allowing on-road operation of used mini-trucks, Canada and the U.S. are accepting another nation‘s cast-offs—vehicles that no longer meet the exporting country‘s vehicle safety or emissions standards. Increasing the supply of older model vehicles in North America undermines government and industry efforts to improve vehicle safety and reduce vehicle emissions, as these efforts are largely dependent on fleet turnover. This risk can be reduced by placing restrictions on the use of these non-conforming vehicles.”
Thanks, it never occurred to me that there might be a term for this catagory. There are some enthusiasts locally who I see at car shows/cruises and sometimes around town and I just love the aesthetic. They’re just so cute but also real cars and trucks.
In the capital cities you’ll find the odd one floating around, but I live in regional Aus, not a capital. And also, I’m talking more about just cart-food, ala SE Asia.
So tell us about cart-food, a la southeast Asia. This is something I suspect we don’t know much about in the U.S. One interesting place I’ve been to is a restaurant that I’ve eaten in when I visited Oxford, England a couple of times. It’s called The Coconut Tree. Yes, it’s a sit-down restaurant, not really serving on a street, but it was interesting food. When I searched on Sri Lankan street food, the first reference that came up is a place in Glebe in New South Wales. I suspect that since you live much closer to southeast Asia, you know more about cart-food in southeast Asia than we do in the U.S. Please tell us about it, since we don’t know much about it in the U.S.
The simplest format I have seen (and eaten) was in Java, Indonesia, where an iterant trader carries his shoulder pole loaded on one side with his product, and on the other a small burner, walking down the street with a distinctive call. If you want a quick snack, you go out and he cooks it right there. The product varies considerably and regionally, but I have seen bakso (kind of polony ball made out of who knows what parts of what kind of animal), various stir fry dishes with rice, sate (various meats on a skewer grilled)
There are - one level up - portable grills on wheels or otherwise that tend to have a semi-permanent space in a market or just on the street. They do the same, but have more variety, seeing as they don"t carry the product all day. One thing I loved was green (unripe, but close to ripe) mangos with chilli flakes.
Then another level up, informal tent restaurants which are permanent, but on the street, and have a full menu, often with amusing painted pictures of their speciality painted on the outside of the tent as advertising.
It is pretty similar in the parts of northern India I went to, lots of vendors selling a wide variety of food, and ubiquitous chai tea stands.
Street food in the heat in SE Asia can be a daunting prospect. The fairly lax attention to food safety combined with the heat… but I ate it anyway. The only “safety” thing I did in both countries is drink bottled water - in Indonesia, especially in the cities, you need to make sure that the bottles are sealed, not recycled! And never get ice in your drinks.
Similar in Brazil, small informal beach restaurants.
Though I left Brazil unimpressed with their cuisine. Mozambique (another Portuguese colony) has outstanding street food. I think the only time I ate in a restaurant was when my girlfriend and I gatecrashed a wedding (the bride and groom invited us, it is a wonderful place! Super friendly. We spoke no Portuguese, they spoke no English, we had to make do with acting)
When I lived in Zimbabwe, it was cheaper for me to take what we call a “taxi”, a 16 seater minibus, often crammed with way more than that, to the oldest township, Mbare Musike to buy the wares there, rather than the CBD. Chicken feet stew anyone? Fast and effective, and back in the “taxi” in less than 5 minutes. A lot of variety, even what was probably vegan, though that was not a thing at that low economic level.
But exctingly weird stuff. Grilled whole field mice. I never tried those because they wre whole. Really whole. Heads, legs, guts, everything.
IME the best indicator of food safety and quality is a long line of local people wanting to buy the street food. This also works for restaurants in touristy cities.
Mexican taco stands and places selling homemade ice cream, grilled corn, Yucatecan food, agua de fresca or antejitos of any type are almost uniformly wonderful; the scariest thing is the hot dog (not very scary).
I’d like to see American sports teams adopt old show tunes and novelty songs as their “anthems” like they do in the UK. Imagine a whole crowd of Bears fans belting out “Yes, We Have No Bananas”…
When I was in Tokyo in 2008, we had a late dinner at a “portable restaurant” just outside the train station we were going to use. The fellow had a large cart with a built-in counter that could seat about three people on barstool-type chairs, but he also had a couple of folding tables he could carry on the cart, with smaller stools, so he’d set up the tables to seat larger groups, and serve single people at the cart/counter, where he also did all the cooking. He even served cold beer.
I was there with a group of friends, and at one point asked them, “Hey, if we were doing this in Canada, how many laws would be we breaking?”
Interesting. One of my favorite restaurant chains is Nando’s although they’re sit-down restaurants. It’s said to be based on the food of Portuguese immigrants to Mozambique, although its headquarters is in South Africa. The country with the most Nando’s restaurants is actually the U.K. The country with the most Nando’s restaurants per capita is Australia. The U.S. is one of the last countries where it opened restaurants, although there are now 45 of them here.
My ex-wife does a large amount of design work for Nandos, mostly presentations for new USA branches. I like it well enough, but not enough to be a regular. The local South African Portuguese food (import from Mozambique too) is better on an individual restaurant level.We have a fairly large Portuguese community and history - Vasco da Gama was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope, the most southern end of the Cape Town area (but not the southern most part of the continent), a place noted for serious storms and high seas.
ETA: I was staying in Lisbon, and found a Mozambican restaurant in Alfada. It was pretty popular.
AFAIK, they’re somehow spontaneous adoptions by the regular fans, rather than “official” team management ideas - but I wouldn’t put it past some managements to try to make it so if they thought they could monetise it .
the chances of that happening in the US are close to zero. Why? A very significant portion of the elected officials LIKE campaigning on how bad/evil/unfair paying taxes is. Making the process fair and easy defeats their purpose. Or at least robs them of a powerful campaign issue. Same thing for border security/immigration. Or abortion. How likely is it that a problem will be solved if the existence of the problem gets people (re)elected?