Street-food vendors colonize public spaces like bacteria on a toilet bowl (and sometimes they're about as clean as that bowl). The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway reborn as an aerial park, opened just last week in New York and already there is a concession stand up there (although it doesn't sell hot dogs - yet). On the beaches in Rio de Janeiro the offerings change throughout the day, from potato chips to skewers of shrimp grilled on portable barbecues. And in Barcelona you can grab a hot, delicious samosa in the early hours for just €1.
All of these are prepared and served from some form of stand, whether a wheeled, powered cart or a picnic cool-box. And these stands are celebrated in Mike Meiré's "Global Street Food", an exhibition showing the home-made gizmos of street-vendors around the world, brought together in the gallery of Dornbracht, a bath and kitchen fittings manufacturer.
The exhibition looks fascinating and includes the stands you see above -- a grill riding on an old bike wheel in Uganda and a cheese and sausage stand made from a shopping art, from Buenas Aires. Of course, as these contraptions have been transplanted into a gallery, they have to be accompanied by some tortuous and meaningless art-speak. Dornbracht doesn't disappoint:
Etcetera. If you can't make it to the exhibition in Cologne, take a look at the PDF available from the site, which features photos of the machines in their natural habitats and a commentary (in German).
Exhibition page [Dornbracht via KK]
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