Once again, Park Slopers are acting crazy. A few of them are anyway. Some want ice cream trucks banned from playgrounds all because they can't stand the meltdowns their kids have when they say no.
Sounds like another classic Park Slope faux pas brought to you by the New York Times.
It's a spectacular day at Harmony Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with
children swinging and running through sprinklers. An “icy man” with his
pushcart of fruit ices stands near the jungle gym, as parents look
toward the gated entrance. A second ices vendor enters, also setting up
shop inside the playground’s cast-iron fence.
Vicki Sell, mother of
3-year-old Katherine, tenses when the vendor starts ringing his little
bell, over and over, hoping her daughter doesn’t have the typical
Pavlovian response.
Ever since Katherine had an inconsolable
meltdown about not being able to have a treat, Ms. Sell has been trying
to have unlicensed vendors ousted from the park. She has repeatedly
called the city’s 311 complaint hot line, joining parents nationwide
who can’t stand the icy man or his motorized big brother, the ice cream man.
I fall into the camp of parents who are irate,” Ms. Sell said. She
has equal disdain for Mister Softee and the ice cream pop vendor
outside the park, but since they are licensed, there is not much she
can do about them.
“I feel kind of bad about having developed
this attitude,” she said. “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.”
Ms. Sell says she
is not obsessed with health and nutrition. She — and others — feel they
have been pushed to the brink by that little bell. Across message
boards and playgrounds, soccer fields and day camp exits, parents have
been raging. In a greener, more health-conscious, unsafe world, the ice
cream man has lost some of his mojo.
I think that ice cream vendors should be allowed to pass by. Not set up camp like vultures.
Mars ain’t the kinda place to raise your kids… And this place is definitely Mars!
Midwest bashing? Ouch
All vendors soliciting on city/public property should be licensed. It just makes safey sense. It also sounds like a job for super nanny.
As someone who has lived in Park Slope off-and-on since I was 14, I’d like to say: fuck this bitch.
As unpopular as it is, across this thread of commentary — Vicki Sell is absolutely correct to voice her opposition about an unlicensed vendor. While some may be sympathatic to an ‘icy man’ just wanting to make a living amidst this Recession, and others may feel this connects to an over-mothering or hyper-sensitive reaction to a child’s wishes for seeing/wanting ices… the fact of the matter has much more validity that reaction, here. If an unlicensed vendor is in a public park — they have no right to distribute product on park grounds, and no right to trespass into the park with cart, at that (which may have its own inherent issues with whatever that product is or can be, right?). In fact — personally here’s a relating example, since I’ve volunteered as a head coach for local baseball for years, which includes orchestrating 15-17 kids/players, parents, in an open space on Prospect Park’s grassy-areas most usually. When field is set with bases, and there’s a game underway that includes the focus & understanding of a 6-8 year old’s attention-span on the game (which can even be fun to watch, when they’re in the outfield)… and another full team of players, at that… you can’t have this distraction of an ‘icy man’ setting up shop. This happens & it took one occurence for me to see first-hand, that the distraction vs. a real park experience (meaning, why it is that you are IN A PARK vs. taking kids elsehere) is in fact, a sensible request. People can enter & recreate — but we cannot set up booths or tents, either. There are rules, for a reason. In fact, one ‘icy man’ parked 4-feet behind my catcher (which gave the poor kid fits, in that it was June…it was hot…there was an ice cart behind him FILLED with ices). Now, I’m born & bred to respond to one Post, earlier — and it didn’t take me long to address this directly with the male vendor (although I did appreciate the “back stop” presented as any baseball missed by the catcher would rebound back to him). However not 5 minutes into this, which preceeded my walking over to the vendor — I had to remove the player from the game as he was unable to take his mind off the prospect of a lemon-ice (no food or snacks allowed during a game). The kid “was done” mentally for the game, he couldn’t re-focus later on, and the vendor had NO BUSINESS being in the park in the first place. I’d ushered him away, sure — but didn’t know that he was unlicensed until Parks police drove by and I asked them casually. They informed me that they were in fact, looking for these vendors to ticket/remove them from the park. It’s a recurrent issue, more than maybe many of our readers realize.
Let’s ban the yuppies from prospect park, in fact, let’s ban them from all of Brooklyn…Ms. Sell, your whine is worse than your childs, take it back to the midwest where it belongs. 311 or 911 should be called on you.
And the idiot woman owns the friggin’ Chip Shop. Full of deep-fried British crap. That gets my Irish up. What a douche. Douche. She should be stuffed with el gordo coco helado and fed to the chipmunks, squirrels, rats, pigeons and hawks.
Parenting tips, Page One: When you child throws a tantrum, remove YOUR child from the situation/environment, not the ICE CREAM MAN. Sweetheart, you are not in Kanas anymore……..
Blamming the ice cream man for your inability to handle a three years olds meltdown, PRICELESS. Obviously you are not park slope or even Brooklyn born and raised. Please, go back to where you came from because the ice cream man is not going anywhere. If fact, I’m off to 9th street playground with my two children for the sole purpose of ice cream treats.
Blamming the ice cream man for your inability to handle a three years olds meltdown, PRICELESS. Obviously you are not park slope or even Brooklyn born and raised. Please, go back to where you came from because the ice cream man is not going anywhere. If fact, I’m off to 9th street playground with my two children for the sole purpose of ice cream treats.
Blamming the ice cream man for your inability to handle a three years olds meltdown, PRICELESS. Obviously you are not park slope or even Brooklyn born and raised. Please, go back to where you came from because the ice cream man is not going anywhere. If fact, I’m off to 9th street playground with my two children for the sole purpose of ice cream treats.
I am the person quoted in the Times story and I my point of view was not accurately reflected. I’m very upset to have been quoted as hating Mister Softee and all these vendors and I have absolutely not started a campaign against them. My complaint was about the ice vendors within the playground that are unlicensed and illegally selling to children in a place they are not allowed. I called 311 once (not multiple times by any stretch of the imagination) to inquire about their legal standing. They do not have sanction from any health authority to handle food and there’s no telling where their product comes from. I had hoped that would be played up in the article. And yes, I do feel that bringing these carts into the playground is predatory. They are run out over and over by the police or parks people but come back time and time again. I don’t have any problem with legal vendors outside the playground in areas they are licensed for — despite what the article says. I’m all for people making a living and for people to choose the time and the place to buy treats for their children. I did discuss these points for the article but I don’t see them there. In fact while I was being interviewed we bought ice pops for our children from a licensed vendor outside the park.
Wow! I haven’t commented much on the narcissism breeding ground that is Park Slope in a while – been busy with Obama’s election and now, health care and the crazy right wing backlash – but this is a whopper that I can’t ignore. This is such a horrific story about parental abandonment of children and abdication by the very worst kind of adults. That a parent would rather attempt to ban ice cream trucks from the playground than set limits on their child’s sugar cravings and tantrums is extraordinarily disturbed and tragic. I thought I’d heard it all when the Stepford Parents were mounting a protest to allow their toddlers in strollers into bars, but clearly, the hits keep on coming out here is parental Loonyville. Park Slope is really a bad place to raise children, isn’t it? I mean, here is a conglomerate of vicariously acting out deprived adult parents gutting their children of the strengths needed to function in the world – frustration tolerance, delayed gratification, self-regulation… Whew!
Peter Loffredo
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/
fpliving@aol.com
Just shows that the Parks Department needs new management. In Prospect Park they’ll let private companies without permits trash the park with absolutely no enforcement or fines … but if your poodle is off leash for a couple minutes … then one will be fined. Boneheads.
The answer is quite simple. When a child asks for ice cream, give it to him….
http://www.forgotten-ny.com
To Ms. Sell: Sell crazy somewhere else, you are not welcome here.
The “ice cream man” has always been a part of the brooklyn tradition. These “out-siders” move into our neighborhoods, make the rents go thru the roof and then want to change everything. The reason they move here in the first place is because the “neighborhood” is so “quaint”, and then they want to go changing everything that makes it a great neighborhood. I am a life-long park sloper and before these mid-western transplants moved in, it really was a great neighborhood…lighten up lady, the poor ice man needs to feed his kids too!!!