Street Hawk Food Truck Hijacked for Cross-Country Road Trip

Documentary Coming Soon

Four days ago, students all across campus were horrified to learn that the beloved Street Hawk Food Truck had gone missing, and was presumed to be stolen. But this morning, it rolled back into Iowa City with quite a story to tell.

The grand theft auto culprits were two third-year film students who, according to their own testimony, “watched Thelma and Louise just one too many times.” 

Ellen Clarkson and Audrey Ruster—roommates and lifelong best friends—were bitter that their spring break plans for Miami had fallen through a few weeks earlier and decided to make their way to Miami on their own. But they needed a ride.

Clarkson has been working at the Street Hawk Food Truck since her freshman year, so she had the keys to the warehouse where it hibernates when it’s not hitting the streets (the location of which the University has redacted from her official testimony). 

They set off in the early hours of Sunday morning, giving them at least 24 hours before any other Street Hawk employees would notice the truck was missing.

Our beloved bright yellow, conspicuously-branded Iowa City mascot spent the next several days zipping Southeast through a variety of famous landmarks. The girls took the truck to the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee, and even attempted to pass it off as a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans, even though Mardi Gras was almost 40 days ago at this point. They were always well-fed, with pre-prepared sandwiches and fried potato chips at their fingertips.

Eventually, the Street Hawk Food Truck made it to the Florida border, but Clarkson disappointingly reports that the heat and humidity was just too much for the old girl. “The engine was making some really scary noises, and we weren’t about to get stranded out there,” Clarkson remembers. 

They turned the truck around and headed back to Iowa City, but as they drove past fields and cities, they realized that the journey had given them much more than the destination ever could.

Clarkson has unsurprisingly lost her job working for the Street Hawk Food Truck, and the University reports that they will be much stricter with which student employees get to know the Street Hawk’s home address. 

Ruster took plenty of documentary-style footage during their journey, and the two hope to make a student film about their experience to debut at FilmScene next year. The current working title for the film is “Street Hawk: To a New Road.”