Decisions about what to air during sweeps season say a lot about what the media thinks of the state of our nation. So when Good Morning America asked viewers to nominate their favorite street vendors as part of its national “Best Food Cart Challenge,” just in time for November sweeps, it was clear that, at least in the eyes of the media, America is food-cart crazy.

Not since Carrie and Miranda first turned the country on to the joys of the cupcake has a food trend garnered such a flurry of attention, and in New York, it’s a veritable media frenzy. From the New York Times (which has awarded the subject of street food with its own Times Topic) to the city’s most popular food blogs to the Tyra Banks Show to BlackBook’s own contribution to the hysteria by coining the term “vendrification”, there seems to be an endless fascination with the ways of the cart.

So how did the new generation of vendors become media darlings?

It started organically enough. Jerome Chang, a Le Cirque-trained pastry chef, launched his DessertTruck in 2007 selling high-end desserts like crème brulée and milk chocolate and peanut butter mousse, and the press responded quickly. In a city always looking for the next big thing, especially when it comes to food, this new gambit (which actually followed on the heels of the earlier Treats Truck) warranted attention. However, it wasn’t just that Chang and other early entrants into the nouveau street cart scene were doing something new -- it was that they were also changing up something old. In the Times, Florence Fabricant wondered how the humble ice cream truck would respond to Chang and his partners’ mission to “elevate street food.” Part of the story was about how these new carts were taking something very familiar -- eating food from a street cart -- and transforming it into something new and fancier.

With a focus on the differences between the new carts and the older ones, a slightly uncomfortable quandary arose: what to call these new vendors. The press tried a variety of descriptors, from “high-end” to “upscale” to “gourmet” to “yuppie, each carrying with it vaguely uncomfortable class distinctions. According to Kenny Lao, whose Rickshaw Dumpling Bar truck was among the first new-school trucks to offer savory fare, this categorization created a false tension among food carts. He would prefer that the new trucks be referred to as “branded." In other words, “Trucks with an actual name versus a chicken and rice truck with no name on it,” he explains. “I think it’s much more indicative of what we’re trying to do. Less discriminatory on the part of the press."

While Lao himself admits to clashes with the proprietors of non-"branded" trucks over streetcorners and customers, he believes that a good bit of the tension is overblown media hype. “It’s because people like you need a story,” he tells me. “It’s easy for you to categorize us, to tell you the truth. You know, into high-end low-end; educated, non-educated; immigrant, nonimmigrant. It’s very, very easy to do that. It creates a good story. A crisis point. You know with conflict, blah, blah, blah.”

While the tensions between the old-school and new-school carts may have been blown out of proportion, there’s no doubt there have been sticky moments. Lev Ekster of CupcakeStop has reported confrontations with kebab vendors. “They're intimidated by the newer vendors and think that they're losing sales as a result of their presence,” he says. Streets Sweets Truck and Schnitzel & Things also ran into trouble with older vendors. These turf wars, of course, are nothing new -- the city’s somewhat archaic zoning restrictions have long created struggles for streetcorners among the city’s vendors. However, the kind of blow-by-blow coverage given to the battles over space between the branded and non-branded trucks brought this long-term tension to the fore, keeping the new trend regularly in the spotlight.

Says Lao over the squabbles that resulted, “I was shocked this spring by all the bitching and all the moaning that happened in the public eye. As an industry, you guys, it’s making everyone look like a bunch of infighting bitchers and moaners. When we first opened the truck, if Eater came to us or some magazine came to us, I wasn’t going to sit there and bitch about the halal guy that I was going to have to deal with just to get some press.”

It did get press though. When the Schnitzel & Things truck twittered that it was being bullied by halal guys on 41st and 6th, Eater promptly included the incident in its regular “Turf War” listing, which recounts the latest street food scuffles. With each incident, a self-perpetuating cycle of media attention arose; the more squabbles, the more media coverage, and it would seem the more media coverage, the more cause for squabbles over the resulting surge of attention and customers.

A similar cycle grew up around tiffs between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants. Although several studies show that street vendors actually increase patronage for stationary businesses because they draw in foot traffic, the attention garnered by the new trucks has drawn the ire of some permanent establishments. Lev Ekster reports that bakeries near his regular locations have repeatedly requested that he move his truck. “Traditional bakeries think that because we're mobile, we have less of a right to conduct business, or we're easier to intimidate into changing locations,” says Ekster. “I don't think a traditional bakery would ever consider walking into another traditional bakery over one avenue away and demanding they change locations.” Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, which also sells cupcakes, fought back in a decidedly old-school way. In a message aimed at Ekster, who often parks his truck near the 80-year-old store, the owners of the shop posted a sign reading, “Trucks from a cupcake? What will they think of next?”

While the Jason Bauer, owner of the popular cupcake bakery chain Crumbs, says that the truck trend itself has had “zero impact on the Manhattan bakery scene,” the notoriety and popularity that Ekster and his CupcakeStop have accumulated will soon change the city’s brick-and-mortar baked good landscape, as Ekster is investigating lease options for a stationary location. Dessert Truck, which fell victim to a lapsed vending permit over the summer, is slated to open a café around Thanksgiving, capitalizing on the press earned while running the truck. After having garnered attention not only for the apple puff pastries and brioche donuts, but also for the four-wheeled venue from which he was dishing them, Truck’s owner Chang says that he owes a lot of his success to the truck trend. “We could not open a brick-and-mortar place if we hadn’t had a truck.” That much of his press came from the fact that he was serving from a vehicle makes him nervous about marketing in this newest incarnation. “It will be a challenge,” he says. “We have to remind people that we were not just a clever truck,” he says. “We served top-notch food.”

Although he will disappoint the many Dessert Truck fans who have asked him whether the new bakery will be decorated like a lorry, Chang is hoping that some of the luster from his truck days will transfer. It remains to be seen. Another question that lingers is how the sudden surge of media attention will impact the vendors who are not part of the newer generation -- those who have struggled with many of the tensions and challenges that have yielded the new guys so much press.

Rickshaw’s Kenny Lao hopes that changing the restrictions placed on street vendors is one of the lasting legacies of the media’s attention on the current food-truck craze. “I really hope that it gets easier to operate,” he says. “The more legitimate businesses out there operating on the street, the more demand from both sides, from all sides, and [the greater chance] for a more clean playing field.

Sean Basinski of the advocacy group the Street Vendor Project is hopeful that perhaps the new vendors will yield greater sway with the government. “I do believe,” he says, “it will be more difficult for City Hall to attack and scapegoat this new breed of vendors.” However, as he said in an email, this shift is in the distance. “There are still such a small number of these 'upscale' vendors that their combined impact on the street (as opposed to in the blogosphere) is tiny.” Even with media hype, you still can’t fight City Hall.