Dogged by Rules : Wiener Vendor Outraged at County’s Health Enforcers

Hot dogs are like cholesterol. You get them in your blood.

Morton S. Diamond also had them deep in his thoughts Wednesday when he leaned against his curb-side wiener cart to explain that hot dogs are his life--and Los Angeles County hot dog rules are killing him.

“I’ve got a legitimate beef,” he said. “That’s why I decided to go to the top dog about it.”

Diamond and his two-wheeled hot dog cart were back at the corner of Sherman Way and Owensmouth Avenue in Canoga Park after visiting the County Board of Supervisors and the head of the county’s health department to protest the rules.

He complained that a new county requirement that vendors take their food carts downtown for routine inspections is not workable because carts aren’t built for freeways. He also disputed a county rule that carts be stored indoors at night in an officially approved “commissary.”

“You don’t dare take a hot dog cart on the freeway. The whole thing would tear apart,” said Diamond, 55. “And what vendor could afford a commissary, even if you could find one to rent.”

Until three months ago, San Fernando Valley hot dog vendors towed their carts to a health department field office in Van Nuys to have inspectors check their stoves, iceboxes and tiny hand-washing sinks. The county consolidated inspections at a single site to provide uniformity.

Officials also had loosely enforced the commissary requirement, which is supposed to regulate how food is stored, the source of potable water used on carts and the manner in which the carts are cleaned and maintained.

Diamond listed a Van Nuys food supply company as his “commissary,” spelling its address in county-mandated three-inch-high letters on his cart and on county license forms.

But he acknowledged Wednesday that he tows his 840-pound hot dog cart to his Canoga Park home each night and parks it out front. He said his awning-topped, custom-built cart won’t fit through the food company’s door.

“The county doesn’t make the roach coaches, those catering trucks, park indoors at night,” he said. “Why should a cart have to be inside?”

After listening to Diamond on Tuesday, supervisors ordered Robert Gates, director of the Department of Health Services, to look into the complaints. Gates’ staff quickly scheduled a meeting with Diamond for next week.

But Art Tilzer, head of the health department’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, defended the food-cart sanitation rules.

Tilzer said Van Nuys cart inspections were halted three months ago when inspection responsibilities were switched from the department’s Environmental Management branch to its Vehicle Inspection Program.

The change provided for uniform safety and sanitation checks at a central location for each of the 2,500 licensed food carts in the county, he said. Inspections are required yearly, or more often if problems are discovered in unannounced field checks.

The crackdown on commissary sites was forced by a proliferation of illegal vending in the county, he said.

“He might need a re-education of the requirements,” Tilzer said of Diamond. He noted that Diamond elevated the dispute by taking it directly to the Board of Supervisors and to Gates without seeking remedies from health department staffers first.

Diamond said he knows he ruffled feathers by going to the top.

“I told Mr. Gates that I didn’t want to find my cart being inspected on a daily basis after this,” he said Wednesday.

Diamond, a 300-pounder who wears a red chef’s hat and apron when he steams his frankfurters on his cart’s propane stove, said he used to run a Van Nuys Boulevard hot dog restaurant called the Dog Pound.

“I was paying $1,200 a month rent. And then the 7-Eleven next door started selling hot dogs. So I said, ‘The hell with it.’ ”

He took to the streets after curb-side vending was legalized in 1985.

“There are hundreds of carts in the Valley now,” he said. “If we have to go downtown for inspections, we’re talking now about getting a caravan of carts at the busiest time of the day.

“Hot dog cart vendors don’t want to be pushed around anymore.”