San Antonio Chef Ticketed 2k For Feeding Homeless

Food trucks are serious business in SA.

They are serious business in many places; they fill a lot of needs/wants of a lot of people, and in bigger cities the varieties are practically endless.

I wish there were more around here, honestly, but we're a tad too small for that.

This is hardly limited to just food trucks though.

Also, I would suggest that those eating from food trucks are most frequently -- not always, but most frequently -- younger (20-50) and, thus, their bodies are more likely to better-handle foodborn illnesses.

Especially better than the old people who go for their fish fry on Friday down at Tom's Diner after Tom didn't wash his hands and started handling the coleslaw.

Also, while health and safety codes are important, it's lunch. Not Ebola on a plate.

Don't be an alarmist.

I got a mild case of food poisoning from Pizza Hut on my 25th birthday (guess where I never get food from ever anymore, by the way). Puking and diarrhea and a headache that wouldn't quit for about 48 hours. And, again, that was mild. A serious salmonella infection can wreak havoc even if you're healthy and young. That's not even getting into the outbreaks of E. coli we get every couple years.

Health and food safety regulations are a pretty big deal.

I'm not saying they aren't important at all.

Just that people need to stop living in fear of everything.

Also, how are you positive it came from that Pizza Hut? Was it literally the only thing you ate for several days?

It was literally the only food I shared with my best friends who got the exact same sickness at the exact same time.

Come on, Ramyrez, you know I'm not one to confuse correlation and causation that easily.

Yeah, but even some of the brighest people I know like to blame their foodborn illnesses on restaurants while there wife is at home handling baby ***and then cooking dinner, as if cross contamination at home could never happen...

But hey, if two of you were identically ill, that changes things! Nevermind then!

I eat the food here all the time and haven't had anything close to being sick. They have zero regulations here and only pay taxes to the government. I guess it depends where you are and if people take their jobs seriously enough. If someone does get sick, nobody is fearful of getting sued either. It's not a thing.

It costs around $2-3 for a doctor's visit too, and that's without any insurance. They have a prepaid system in which you load your card with and sometimes employers can give their employees these cards.

But here, healthcare and definitely drugs are not a problem. It's not a for profit entity. You get sick, go to doctor, get better and move on with your life. Old ideology from the communist days I'd imagine.

Dunno if you're being sarcastic or not, but it was four of us. And I'd just come in from out of town, too, so we hadn't even been breathing the same air for more than a handful of hours.

They have hospitals in Serbia ? Wow I learned something today !

Yeah, it was pretty obvious.

Can't believe that she is going to fight it though. Can believe that the media is whipping up a frenzy over regulations to protect the people she is serving too...

Like I said from the get go, it's a perfectly reasonable ticket for a basic reason. Much like the hunters feeding the homeless wild game.

To paraphrase Sealab 2021, "(Her) heart is the right place, but (her) head is up her ***."

Then again, I think literally everyone who regularly posts in P&R has thought or said that about almost literally everyone else who regularly posts at some point, sooooooo.

Par for the course.

The worst thing is that she's already a chef/restaurant owner. If this happened to her on-site at her place of business, no one would bat an eyelash and -- in fact -- would be full throttle pushing for her to be cited.

But because she did it gratis "because of her religion", suddenly she's got a following.

Again, I would have been okay with them just telling her to close up shop that day, that she was in violation, and that while what she was doing is admirable, she still has to follow the same food service laws that always need to be followed.

But no, the cops exercised their duty as they felt was appropriate and she got a perfectly legitimate ticket, and she's trying to soapbox now instead of just paying the *** thing.

I personally think speed limits outside of residential neighborhoods are contrived and speeding tickets aren't about safety, but about income for the state/municipalities.

But that doesn't mean I stomp my feet and have a tantrum and cite a god-given right to get where the *** I'm going when I get a speeding ticket.

And, really, it's the same issue at the heart of it. It's an issue that she disagrees with the government about in terms of the safety of her practices. But that we disagree with a law or the reasoning for it doesn't give us the right to flagrantly ignore that law.

Your police force must be anal then. Hardly anyone gets a speeding ticket unless they are going 10+ MPH over the speed limit here in San Antonio. Or you are speeding through a work zone/school zone.

Austin is the worst city for speeding tickets, they will pull you over if you are over 3 MPH in any area.

Rural areas are far different from city areas, and it varies by municipality around here.

By law (in Pennsylvania anyhow) they have to spot you +5.

On the interstate you can generally get away with +15. Most police will spot you +10 in otherwise normal weather conditions.

So they're not "unreasonable", so to speak.

But what I'm talking about is a multi-faceted issue, as I think the posted limits themselves are set arbitrarily low, and they definitely use speeding tickets as a source of income. Otherwise, if all they cared about was safety, they'd be far better served by ticketing people who run red lights, turn without properly signaling, tailgate, etc. But about the only time you'll get hit for ANY of those is maybe running a light/stop sign with the officer right there. As in, not only present, but actually right behind you and able to easily snag you.

San Antonio area*

Since my father lives in a rural town east of San Antonio, and I visit him often, the observation is not only for the city, but the rural areas also.

I have never been pulled over in my life, and I generally go 5+ MPH over the speed limit often.

*ahem*

I may be speaking about more than just the margin for error in your standard speed-tracking equipment.

But that's sort of my point. I think the speed limits are too low and really don't do so much for safety as much as they do for the local/state government's coffers.

But in this instance my opinion doesn't matter. It doesn't allow me to ignore a law because I disagree with it.

Which is exactly what this woman is trying to do because, in her opinion, "god".

When I blazed through PA last summer, if I remember right, the speed limit on IH90 was 65 MPH.

Which, in that case, I agree with you.

Yeah, most of the interstates + most of the turnpike are 65 and everything else is 55.

But again, I was just using myself as an example.

I've only ever been pulled over twice, ticketed once, so I can't really complain too much...when I got ticketed this past autumn and was bitching about it, my family's response was, "You've only been ticketed once and you're...you. You should probably be happy it took this long."

Which sort of is still sitting in my craw, but whatever.

***. It just ocurred to me I should have said, when asked why I was going so fast, "FOR JESUS!"

Maybe I shouldn't say that there's a road in Texas where the speed limit is 85 mph...

Yeah...you see how everything there is flat and clear? That happens in Pennsylvania "never" and "occasionally", respectively. <_<;

Honestly, Pennsylvania speed limits are year-round, but you have to remember the account for some really, really nasty winter weather.

Don't be hating on Texas weather! We have our own problems with 3-4 month of 100+ degree heat, along with the occasional hurricane and other flood-related weather.