Pro-ID

At 7am this morning a yellow delivery truck trundled through Manhattan carrying, along with raw food ingredients, a rather unusual payload: The United States national soccer team. The Algerians too.

Not the actual teams of course, but by 9am, when the specially-designed LCD television was rigged up atop the truck, the truck made good on its promise of delivering the match between these teams to the sidewalks of New York City. Free of charge.

Since last week the ESPN Match Truck has been staking out select spots in Manhattan on every World Cup game day, fully deployed and ready to go by 9am. A support crew hoists a custom 55" monitor, encased a specially-made weatherproof and glare-free housing, atop the truck while the technical director rigs up a DirecTV satellite dish and receiver. Outdoor speakers are connected to make the commentators heard, and then bypassing New Yorkers suddenly have a compelling reason to linger.

But the matches are only half the story; the other half is the food. The truck's graphics are hand-painted, like an original L.A. taco truck, which is probably not accidental--ESPN and the Civic Entertainment Group, who helps manage the truck, partnered with L.A.'s legendary Kogi BBQ Truck to devise an international menu of snacks inspired by the nations in the tournament. For a few bucks fans can chow down on Tortilla Espanola, Lamb Gyros, Kogi Ketchup Sliders, Yaki Mandoo Dumpings, and others. The food itself is awesome (I can vouch) and credibility, along with food-porn photos, has been conferred and displayed by food-blog write-ups atAlways Hungry NY, Esquire's Eat Like a Man and Deep End Dining.

"The trend of high-end street food--'vendrification'--is gaining more popularity around the country," explains Seth Ader, ESPN's Senior Director of Sports Marketing. "And given the daytime hours when World Cup matches are being shown in the U.S., we wanted to offer our fans an opportunity to see matches that they would otherwise miss while commuting or running errands. The association with Kogi gave us instant credibility with the street food crowd, while the ESPN brand and the TV setup delivers a great World Cup viewing experience."

I stopped by the truck yesterday and caught part of the Spain/Honduras match, where a small crowd had gathered in Foley Square. There are other World Cup pop-up communities in New York, like the Play Beautiful space in NoLita and Puma City at the Seaport; both of those have strong retail components, but what I liked about the ESPN truck is that there was absolutely no air of hucksterism about it. No one tried to sell me anything. One guy in an ESPN shirt was handing out flyers which I assumed would be selling cable packages, but instead they were just match schedules. I even spotted ESPN's Seth Ader by the truck--hanging out and watching the game with the rest of us. It felt like it was all about the matches, with optional, tasty snacks at street-food prices.

In Kogi BBQ tradition, the truck tweets its daily locations here. (There's also an L.A. counterpart, tweeting here.) I was unable to make this morning's U.S.A./Algeria match up in midtown, where the truck was mobbed by roughly 400 bypassers-turned-viewers, but I called CEG Event Coordinator Luke Abbott, who was manning the truck, to ask him what the mood was like after Donovan scored the 91st-minute game-changer. Abbott picked his words carefully: "It was...absolutely insane."

[image credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images]

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