Almost every day at her famed food stand, Shela Powell changes the menu. About once every two years, a local artist comes and changes her sign. One thing that had not changed in 20 years was where Shela's Pot was parked.
Until Monday evening.
As twilight crept across Pillsbury Sound on Monday, Powell and some friends moved her "mobile food stand" 50 feet away from the sidewalk in front of Cruz Bay Park where she has been dishing up home-cooked lunches since Nov. 8, 1980.
"I was issued a permit from the police to be there, and suddenly Housing Parks and Recreation said I was on their property. I was on the sidewalk," she said.
Her agreement to relocate reportedly came after a visit last week from HPR officials. She hired a lawyer to take a stand in defense of her stand, she said, and they finally settled on a one-year agreement with an annual renewal option.
Customers ready to line up for boxes of chicken wings and rice, oxtail stew, barbecue and fish on Tuesday found the place to do it was between the bandstand and the Morris F. deCastro Clinic.
The relocation comes at a time when Licensing and Consumer Affairs Department authorities are telling mobile food vendors they must obey the law requiring them to pack up their stands and move them away overnight. But Powell says it was St. John administrator Julien Harley who prompted her move.
Harley confirmed Monday night that he had spoken with Powell several months ago.
He said Cruz Bay Park is like Emancipation Garden on St. Thomas or Buddhoe Park on St. Croix: "There's not supposed to be any vendors there. She's a mobile vendor. Mobiles are supposed to move. But she hasn't moved in five years."
Readily admitting Harley is off by 15 in his count, Powell said she hasn't moved at all. "It's a landmark. How can you move a landmark?" she said of her stand.
But now Shela's Pot is in a new place. The canvas canopy is back up, and the wooden picnic table has been shunted behind the bandstand. And the old familiar spot by the Emancipation statue where Powell served customers for so long looks, well, naked.
"That's what everyone's been telling me," she said.
