From the Ground Up
Community, Recovery, and Tacos on Lake Street, Minneapolis
Mario Hernandez, 42, knows the power of a taco to change lives. As the founder and four-year lead of the Taco Tour on Lake Street, Minneapolis, Hernandez has taken what was once one of the city’s best kept secrets (that there are dozens of best-in-class taquerias along the Lake Street corridor) and turned it into a yearly tradition that people all over the state flocked to and raved about.
“It used to be that when people thought of Lake Street they only thought about what it was like in the 90s, things like drugs, prostitution, and violence,” says Hernandez. “But these immigrant-owned businesses of the past 20 years have really turned things around. Lake Street isn’t like that anymore. The Taco Tour is a way to show people that.”
The Lake Street corridor, which runs eight miles from Lake Bde Maka Ska all the way east to the Mississippi River, has transformed itself again and again over the decades. But it’s almost always been a gathering place for waves of immigrant communities, from the Swedes to Italians to Latinos to Somalis, as cheaper rents attracted eager entrepreneurs. As a result, it’s now a multicultural hot spot that boasts everything from Swedish-themed Christmas stores, Somali-run money transfer businesses, Italian restaurants, Mexican Mercados, and of course, taco shops.
“Immigrant-owned businesses of the past 20 years have really turned things around.”
But now, Lake Street is once more in transformation. This summer, it became the center of national and international attention as George Floyd’s murder (which took place just a few blocks off of Lake Street) sparked uprisings across the globe. Suddenly, CNN was looping footage of not only peaceful protests, but of its businesses burning, of business owners defending their storefronts, tear-gassed protestors, and the police shooting rubber bullets into a crowd of people walking down the corridor. But, despite the trauma and the upheavals, Hernandez views this is an opportunity to show the power of this community’s resilience, fortitude, and willingness to change once again.
He’s seen firsthand the ability of this community to come together. Hernandez first became involved in organizing on Lake Street as the Executive Director of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC), a non-profit supporting Latino entrepreneurship and education in Minneapolis. But whenever he would tell friends and family about the location of LEDC’s office (just a couple of blocks south of Lake), they would pepper him with questions.
“‘Aren’t you nervous walking around there?’ ‘What’s it actually like?’” remembers Hernandez, recounting the questions from wide-eyed friends, mostly white, who were surprised to hear where Hernandez spent most of his days. “I was taken aback by their reactions at first, because I just had my favorite lunch spots and was friendly with the folks over there. And I realized that none of these people had actually been to Lake Street.”
Their reactions were grounded in the Lake Street of the past, when massage parlors and porn shops lined the street, instead of the taquerias and laundromats that Hernandez was now accustomed to. “Is Lake Street perfect? No,” he says. “But it’s definitely not what it used to be.”
And the more time he spent on Lake Street, the more he realized that immigrant-owned businesses were a huge part of its hidden transformation. He came to understand the evolution of these restaurateurs: from working in someone else’s restaurant, to taking a risk with their own business, realizing that the community around them plays a large role in their success, and then starting to get involved socially and philanthropically with their patrons and neighbors. “These business-owners turned Lake Street around,” says Hernandez, “and they weren’t being recognized for that.”
It was from these conversations with both outsiders and business-owners that the Taco Tour on Lake Street was born. Hernandez and his team at LEDC envisioned it as a way to thank these entrepreneurs by bringing more customers to their restaurants, help them build their marketing skills, and at the same time change the narrative of what Lake Street is — and who it’s for.
“It was all about: how can we bring people in? How can we build community, not just for people living and working near Lake Street, but for the city at large? How can we make Lake Street a place that’s open to everyone?”
Running from 2015 through 2018 (with a change in leadership that put the tour on hiatus in 2019, and has now been put on hold due to COVID in 2020), the Taco Tour succeeded in bringing in thousands of taco lovers from across the city, and across the state. For many people, it was the first time they had been on Lake Street, let alone frequented more than a dozen establishments in one day.
“These business-owners turned Lake Street around,” says Hernandez, “and they weren’t being recognized for that.”
“We did some follow up surveys after the tour each year,” said Hernandez. “And one of the surveys said that 75% of the people who responded had a more positive and improved appreciation of Lake Street versus a negative view, after the tour. That’s exactly what we wanted. It was all about exposure, so they can demystify the myths that they have, and go eat some awesome tacos.”
Now, it’s time to rethink what Lake Street means to the city once again.
The process of that recovery still largely remains to be seen. But, says Hernandez, it could present an opportunity. “Resurrection will be interesting. Because some buildings were destroyed, the redevelopment plans that were slated for later might happen now, or sooner. Then the question will become: how do you do that in a way that doesn’t gentrify and displace? But there’s a lot of opportunity there.”
There’s also community and cultural assets to build on during the period of recovery. “There’s an identity affiliation with people on Lake. This process is going to infuse and reinvigorate their pride in it. They’re the underdogs, and they’re fighting for their community. It’s going to rally people.”
As for the Taco Tour, Hernandez sees it as playing a role in that rebuilding, although what that will look like is still unclear. With COVID-19 concerns lingering, particularly in lower income communities, the idea of physically gathering inside taquerias and around taco stands doesn’t seem realistic.
“We want to do the Taco Tour again,” says Hernandez. “We’re just going to have to be a little more creative about it. Maybe a virtual tour, and people can do curbside pickups of their tacos? We’re not sure yet. But one thing is certain — Lake Street is going to need the Taco Tour, or something like it, now more than ever.”
