The Dark Side of Street Food

Two ice cream vendors pepper sprayed on the same day

Life may seem great for street food vendors with all their Twitter followers and the endless love they get from foodies who hang on their every tweet.

But life is not always so sweet on the street. Sometimes vendors get arrested for selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs at sanctioned festivals and sometimes ice cream vendors get attacked on the mean streets of Marin. Then there is the time two ice cream vendors got pepper sprayed on the same day in Salinas.

Police are looking for two people accused of attacking ice cream vendors with pepper spray in two separate incidents on Monday.

In the first attack, officers said two men approached a 36-year-old pushcart vendor Monday afternoon and asked him about the ice cream before one of them sprayed him in the face and eyes, according to the Associated Press.

An hour later two men attacked a 64-year-old vendor in a different part of the city in the same way. They also took his money.

The first vendor was treated at a local hospital and released but the elderly man was taken away in an ambulance.

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