Thematic Photographic - Kitchen

Every Wednesday, Carmi posts the week's theme for Thematic Photographic. For the next seven days, bloggers post photos that echo that theme. This week's theme is: Kitchen.

A kitchen can be any place food is prepared - it's amazing how portable it can be. There is an abundance of food prepared and served for sale on the streets of Los Angeles. Here's one L.A. kitchen - a bacon dog vendor, on Hollywood Boulevard, late on a Saturday night.

Bacon dogs are both an L.A. tradition and an L.A. controversy. Bacon dogs are hot dogs wrapped with bacon, grilled with peppers and onions and served on a bun. Most of the vendors are Latino entrepreneurs, and their portable food stands are improvised. This high-end bacon-dog vendor works in a tourist area, and appears to have a pretty well appointed cart, but bacon-dog carts can be as simple as a wire shopping cart holding a propane tank, with a cookie sheet balanced on top.

The controversy is that recently the County Health Department has been cracking down on street bacon dog vendors. They are shutting them down, fining them, and even jailing them if repeat offenders. The objection is that street dogs must be steamed, not grilled, to conform to the County Health Code.

It's tricky photographing them, because they are ever watchful for County Inspectors. Some vendors set up shop behind fences and shrubs to screen themselves from view. Some even have protectors that signal when police cars drive by, so carts can be wheeled out of view.

But so far, the bacon dog vendors are still on L.A.'s streets. Our hunger for bacon dogs is strong.

C'mon. You know you want one.