Nothing exotic today – just a trip down the block.

For the past few months, we’ve had a little suburban revival going on in our town. Years ago, when the Albertson’s supermarket down at the end of Channing St shut down, everyone lamented that part of the neighborhood was dying. The businesses in the surrounding shopping plaza – already rather symptomatic of a last-gasp – did manage to hang on for a while: the Dollar Store, the dry cleaners, liquor store, tacqueria and the wig shop. But one by one they also shuttered, leaving the Edgewood feeling a bit more like some forgotten suburb of Detroit than bustling Silicon Valley.

Some time last fall, someone decided to try to get a bunch of food trucks to come on down to the old Albertsons parking lot one evening. The idea was to lure residents of the surrounding neighborhoods out to some common space – to meet, to eat, and to schmooze. To get to know each other and, in doing so, to help form some sort of community around the abandoned space.

It worked better than they dreamed, and “Edgewood Eats” quickly became a Monday night ritual for much of the neighborhood. Families come out with lawn chairs and picnic blankets. They set up on the sidewalk, or on the asphalt, and chat and compare their lobster rolls, garlic noodles and kalbi from the dozen or so trucks while kids careen around in rollerblades on butterscotch brownie buzzes. They’ve got a devoted following. They’ve got a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/EdgewoodEats).

Anyhow – no great story here, no punch line. Just a nice little discovery in our neighborhood.