Results tagged “icecreamtruck”

Around the start of monsoon season summer, we heard from a couple Brooklyn moms who were outraged about Mr. Softee's mission to turn perfectly healthy children into sugar-addicted diabetic amputees. The ice cream truck backlash has only intensified since then, with anti-ice cream moms demanding death to Mr. Softee nationwide. In Chicago, ice cream trucks have been banned entirely from the 18th Ward, and here the group Asthma Free School Zone is urging principals to shoo the trucks away from schools. And then there's Vicki Sell, mother of 3-year-old Katherine and co-owner of the fish and chips mini-chain Chipshop, which doesn't exactly offer the healthiest cuisine in the world. She tells the Times, "I fall into the camp of parents who are irate...I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this." The "two of them" are the unlicensed pushcart frozen ice vendors who stalk the playground to seduce precious Katherine over to the sweet side. So now Sell calls 311 to defend her child from the peddlers. But still they come, and they've been driving Katherine to an "inconsolable meltdown."

A Mister Softee truck driver in Queens didn't find anything funny about a rival Good Humor man encroaching on his turf, so he decided to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. According to the Post, on Tuesday afternoon in Elmhurst, George Peralta, 27, pulled his Mister Softee truck in front of 50-year-old Good Humor man Ernesto Valverde, while accomplice Andy Arevalo parked his ice cream truck behind Valverde, blocking him in. With the help of a third man, they allegedly took Valverde's keys and told him to "stay off [our] route, we know where you live, we know where you parked the truck."

While aggravated Brooklyn residents near McCarren Park have launched an organized campaign against the insipid jingles incessantly blaring from parked ice cream trucks, parents in other parts of the borough are taking aim at Mister Softee not for how he sounds but for what he sells to their children. Well, two parents anyway; a Bensonhurst mom tells the Daily News she takes her 7-year-old daugher to Seth Low Park for exercise, but an ice cream truck parked there is tearing her family apart: "I’ve had fights with my daughter in the past about it. You kind of feel like it’s pushed on you. It’s one thing if they’re just in the neighborhood, but to be here by contract [with the city], they might as well be selling drugs." (They've been known to do that too!)

With summer almost upon us, the scourge of the ubiquitous ice cream truck jingle is back to torment New York again. But instead of letting it drive them barking mad, one group of concerned citizens in Brooklyn is taking action against the incessant, insipid jingles reverberating on all sides of McCarren Park. They've put up signs decrying the noise pollution, and formed a Yahoo Group to share and document their noise complaint calls to 311 and the local precinct. To us, they're heroes standing up for mankind's basic right to enjoy the park without resorting to military-style executions. But Miss Heather at New York Shitty, which spotted the group's signage over the weekend, speculates that the campaign is being run by arriviste condo dwellers who ought to just "get over it." And Roy Edroso at the Voice sardonically wonders whether they'll also "protest the crack of softball bats, the sizzling of outdoor grillers, and peals of childish laughter." We suspect these two have never been treated to a non-stop Kool Man "Pop Goes the Weasel" marathon outside their apartments. It is as maddening as it is illegal, and even the non-condo Inwood crowd agrees.

Creative Time and the Center for Tactical Magic are jumping on the ice cream truck bandwagon this weekend, but their jingle's going to be a bit more radical than your local Kool Man's "Pop Goes the Weasel." Their anarchist ice cream truck and mobile “protest karaoke station” will travel to parks in both Brooklyn and Queens "to engage local communities and hopefully stimulate people to think broadly about interaction with politics."

Start sweating, Mister Softee. As promised earlier this month, artisanal ice cream company Van Leeuwen has brought high quality scoops to the city's streets at last. Soho is the first neighborhood to have their screams answered; scoops (starting at $3.50) are being dished out as you read this near the intersection of Greene and Prince Streets. Van Leeuwen reps tell us the truck will be there daily from noon to 7 p.m., including weekends – barring any savage turf wars with rival sweet pushers.

As DUMBO NYC pointed out today, it’s that time of year when the city is crawling with ice cream trucks. The only problem is – other than the maddening repetition of hit jingles like “Pop Goes the Weasel” – these Kool Man and Mister Softee purveyors don’t sell ice cream; it’s all synthetic soft serve or pre-packaged frozen products that ought to be shut down by Children's Services. Even the aesthetically appealing retro Good Humor man is peddling sub par processed treats. What’s an ice cream snob to do?

Earlier this year, the city's new noise code went into effect, and the city has definitely been enforcing it on Staten Island's Kinborn Street. The Department of Environmental Protection has fined Lucie Liebman $1,000 for a noisy ice truck jingle. The thing is, Liebman doesn't have an ice cream truck! A Lickety Split truck had parked outside Liebman's house and sounded its jingle. The DEP sent two summonses to Liebman, before dropping off the hefty...