Mister Noisee

Anonymous, counterfeit ice cream

Ice cream trucks are symbols of childhood, of summer, of fun. They bring joy to young and old alike all over the city. Not liking them must make you a curmudgeonly, fun-hating stick in the mud. Everyone knows the Mister Softee song!

Whatever. Try living with one outside your bedroom.

That's what it feels like for 25-year-old Brooklyn resident Olga Orellana. She says she can hear them outside from around ten in the morning until almost midnight, making so much noise.

"I don't know why they go so long," she says. "Who is eating so much ice cream?"

Ice cream truck noise was supposed to be a thing of the past, with a law passed in 2005 that requires trucks to turn the music off while parked. In my observation, trucks do observe this rule, especially in Manhattan. However, foot traffic in Brooklyn is less dense, and so the trucks have to keep moving to find customers, and thus the song is playing almost constantly. Which, for ground-floor, front-bedroom dwellers like Orellana, is a problem.

"All day and into the night, I hear the trucks," she complains.

It's not just the noise that's a problem, either, it's also the smell of exhaust from the generators that keep the ice cream cold. It clogs the air for minutes after the truck goes by. The smell can make the ice cream just purchased from the truck very difficult to enjoy.

While Mister Softee is the most visible offender, they are not the only one, nor the most nefarious. This entertaining Times story from 2005 profiles a private investigator who tracks impostor Mister Softee trucks for copyright infringement. While he seems to have been successful, there are off-brand ice cream trucks that play "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" and don't have a company name or phone number on their sides, only 311. This raises questions of accountability. Who does one complain about when calling 311?

A representative from 311 did not have figures about ice cream truck noise complaints available, and a representative from Brooklyn's 83rd Precinct said the precinct does not get a lot. But that's not to say people don't complain in their living rooms and online. And with confirmed reports of the seemingly apocryphal tale that ice cream men deal drugs, it may be time to just go into the bodega, get a frozen Snickers, and let the ice cream truck ride off into the sunset, speakers blaring.