The company that has a monopoly on ice cream truck music | Hacker News Reader

The company that has a monopoly on ice cream truck music

thehustle.co

75 pointspseudolus52 comments

On the topic of ice cream trucks and monopolies, has anybody else seen the South Pico Armored Ice Cream Truck?

My best guess is that Los Angeles hands out its popsicle man contract to a single vendor with the caveat that they are required to serve the entire city, not just the profitable bits. That way every kid can get a fudgecicle on a sunny day.

That's the only way I can explain what I saw in the neighborhood south of Pico, near Little Ethiopia, where Mo' Betta Meaty Meat Burgers used to be.

Now if you don't know the area, there are a whole bunch of really cool houses dating back to around the time the movie Snow White came out, many with whimsical little turrets and minarets like little fairy tale castles. It's a pleasant neighborhood to walk around for an afternoon.

North of Pico, that is.

Immediately South, the lawns grow knee high, bars appear on windows, and the walkability declines... significantly. Mortally, perhaps. But there are houses there that could conceivably house children. So the Ice Cream must flow.

And one day in July, I saw what was clearly an Ice Cream truck, but with steel grill plates welded over all the windows with a little slot cut out with a torch that could theoretically be used to pass an ice cream sandwich through. That is, were it not weaving along at 45 miles an hour (playing its jolly tune as stipulated in the contract), then careening around a corner on two wheels to high tail it out of there.

It was the missing scene from Mad Max. The ice cream man of the apocolypse.

10 years later, I'm starting to doubt whether I really saw it.

But I did.

If you've never heard of the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, now is the time to look them up. (-:

What a fantastic piece of writing, your post. I really want to see a picture of an armored ice cream truck now.

Edit: thanks reddit... https://i.redd.it/if0b8pvl0yn31.jpg

Nice find. That looks like it must be the Mk. II version, starting with a proper armored car and working backward until ice cream can come out.

The one I saw started life as a little willys postal jeep conversion, and ended up looking like somebody had trapped the A-Team with it in a welding shop filled with plate steel for long enough for the music to play.

I'll post a photo if I can find one.

Possibly related. Ice cream is a pretty rough way to make money, but it’s all cash. More than a few of them sell drugs.

No different than the fast food places in certain neighborhoods of Los Angeles. I entered a KFC that had plexiglass partitions on the inside, from the counter to the ceiling, with a slide out tray were you put the money and the cashier puts your food. The bathrooms were locked and you needed a key that was attached to a five pound weight. All that for some mac-n-cheese and a coleslaw.

These anti-theft methods now seem normal with the pandemic.

The City of Philadelphia famously wanted to outlaw bullet-proof partitions in businesses.

https://www.snopes.com/uploads/2017/12/Bill-No.-17096301-As-...

On the extremely racist history of the standard tune (content warning): https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...

And an interview with RZA: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/15/902811996/wutang-clans-rza-on...

Wow. The article is worth a read. I think our ice cream trucks use a different tune, but it’s been a while, so maybe I’m wrong. Either way, I will never hear that tune the same way again. Same for “zip a dee doo dah”.

Edit: the article mentions this, and that particular tune is being replaced. “He’s replacing it with a new 45-second jingle written and produced by Wu-Tang Clan member, RZA,”

hol up. what's wrong with zip a dee doo dah??

It’s from the Disney movie - “Song of the South”.

Isn't it the same tune as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Your_Ears_Hang_Low%3F

Literally in your wiki link:

> The origin of the song is most likely George Washington Dixon's "Zip Coon", penned in 1838.

Which is also the racist song being talked about in the NPR article.

That links to

> "Turkey in the Straw" was initially a popular tune for fiddle players as early as 1820.

Which seems to predate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw#Racist_ver...

The next sentence:

> In the late 1870s until the 1930s, "Turkey in the Straw" was performed in minstrel shows by blackface actors and musicians.

In the "racist versions" section:

> Another contrafactum, "Zip Coon", sung to the same tune as "Turkey in the Straw",[5] was popularized by Dixon and flourished during 1830s. This version was first published between 1829 and 1834 in either New York or Baltimore. All of the above performers claimed to have written the song, and the dispute is not resolved.

It's possible for both things to be true and for multiple versions to have become popular at the same time, with one outshining the other in popularity. As a recent example, Aretha Franklin's "Respect" is a cover.

In any case, the NPR's assertion is that specifically in the context of ice cream, 19th century ice cream parlors played minstrel songs (including but not limited to the song in question), and when they moved to trucks they played the music they used to play in parlors to attract customers who remembered what ice cream parlors sounded like.

Out of personal curiosity and HN's convenience, here's the actual 45 second track RZA produced for them. It's cute enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWtNeat9CIk

with a postscript: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=314246332

I know nobody actually reads the articles, but this is discussed and linked in OP.

In Taiwan, garbage isn't left out on the street, rather, you bring it down when the truck comes around. So the garbage trucks play tunes to announce their arrival on the block.

Thing is, they're the same tunes as ice cream trucks in the States.

This was very confusing when we ran out to score some delicious ice cream.

In many parts of Mexico they ring a loud bell by hand.

Here’s the tune (one of the): https://youtu.be/BtpWn6PuDX0

I don't know how the drivers aren't driven mad by hearing those jingles all day. I go berserk just walking by them.

If I was an evil prison warden, I'd play those tunes to punish the prisoners.

They're also loud enough to damage your hearing.

Maybe you stop hearing it?

Also playing music over and over is considered torture.

When I lived in Germany (Air Force brat), a vendor would drive his grocery truck through the neighborhood. He had a loudspeaker on the roof and would sing into it "Apples, tomatoes, carrots, ...". It wasn't obnoxious at all, but rather pleasant.

Of course, us kids would modify the words to a rude version, and would run around singing that as loud as possible. The vendor wasn't mad, he was just amused by our antics.

Is this even allowed? I thought making loud noises and announcements like that are actually banned in Germany.

This was decades ago :-)

In a city probably, in the suburb or a rural town I think the local farmer can definitely get away with it and the mayor's wife might buy potatoes and eggs from the truck every week...

I remember this from my (German) childhood in the 90ies. But the farmer who did it used to ring a bell and shouted "Kartoffeln" without any artificial amplification.

It felt like a relict from another time and I think he stopped his rounds before the 90ies were over.

While I'm ranting, I love the church bells in Europe. That booonnnngggg from a giant bronze bell is a truly heavenly sound. I've never heard a recording of it that delivers the richness of the actual sound.

In America, the electric bells on the churches are like driving a nail into my skull.

In England, there is a practice called change ringing [1], which is apparently an art, and involves ringing bells in amelodic yet mathematical patterns. If you live near particularly enthusiastic ringers, this can go on for hours on a Sunday, and is hell on earth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing

There are church bell concerts in my hometown.

See the bells in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cU07eA-iE and the 3D panorama linked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glockenmuseum_Stiftskirche_Her...

There is public architecture too, like municipal bell towers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWozMInlLUQ

It's fun. If you live at least half a kilometer away from the church. If you live right next to a church, it's a miserable experience and a wakeup call 6:30 in the morning.

This was used as actual torture in MKUltra experiments:

>> In addition, torturers used what has been called "futility music", like [repeatedly looping] Barney's "I love you" and the song from the Meow Mix commercial...

I wouldn't have put it past them to use this, either.

https://www.vox.com/2014/12/11/7375961/cia-torture-music

> If I was an evil prison warden, I'd play those tunes to punish the prisoners.

Nothing to make "fun" about really, as this is a real thing in torture camps. Not with ice cream truck music, though.

I used to work at a local museum in French Brittany, where a very loud bagpipes tune played in a 10min loop. Visitors were constantly asking me how I still could stand it and... as a matter of fact, I could stand it. I think the ear get used to is.

Had a summer job as a Ice Cream van driver. The only downside was the tune. I ended up whistling all day. You park you car after work and you hand automatically go to turn on the chimes. And yes - I even dreamt the tune.

Get job, would be fairly immune to covid down-turn - might actually be a mini-boom. Many good memories just not of the tune. "Just one Cornetto ..."

Also see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0686shj Good maths, a strong bladder and the ability to hold eight '99s' in one hand. Ali Coote remembers the important lessons she learned as an Ice Cream Van driver.

I'm not a lead foot but I'd go mad after a while from driving through neighborhood after neighborhood at 3 MPH.

In Vietnam they have these motorbike peddles that drive around selling food, picking up scrap metal, sharpening knives. There’s one probably every 20 minutes driving by. Was absolutely mind bending at first, but eventually I got used to and don’t even notice anymore.

https://youtu.be/PJ1ySFEQOtg

They also have a type of peddler that drives around with what is essentially a coal furnace strapped to a motorbike. He sells hot buns. There’s literally fire and smoke coming out from his tail end.

https://youtu.be/oH3SeODFXZ4

(You can see fire at the end when he drives off. But it’s a small one. I seen much larger fires.)

In the U.K. several of the popular tunes are still in copyright, in contrast. O sole mio is still copyrighted, for example.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvErXZWUWec

As is Barry Stoller's theme to Match of the Day.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIqRiF-7CsM

The volume does not go up to 11.

* https://youtu.be/p-B3lcXP6MY?t=117

And it's not that U.S. company making the boxes, but a company in Norwich.

* http://microminiatures.com/chimes.html

Pretty sure any ice cream trucks could use different music and no one would notice besides the parents, and if you use the right tone everyone is still gonna know exactly what is up. Such an easy fix.

Probably anything out of the ordinary would work. In Japan, the equivalent of ice cream truck is the stone-roasted sweet potato truck. They use a strange chant that never fails to get my attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7xqzpXeDfo

This one made me laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHAPoaTQ6lI

COVID19 has been good for the ice cream truck in my neighborhood, mainly because with children not off at school, he's been able to come everyday since the pandemic started instead of just the weekends and holidays during the non-summer months. I do wonder if the truck is part of the 3% not using the music box from the article because the music the truck here plays includes many of the typical tracks but also cycles through Happy Birthday, When the Saints Go Marching In, Battle Hymn of the Republic and several other catchy songs. It's a traditional style ice cream truck, not just a van with stickers on it, so I doubt it's some hacked up MP3 player. If I actually ate ice cream, I'd go out and ask.

Mister Softee famously has a trademark on its jingle and will sue other ice cream trucks using it; I wonder if they get their music boxes from elsewhere or whether they just have Nichols make them a special box?

Interesting the box only plays one at a time. A setting that played them in order would be less irritating, no?

You want people to associate the song with ice cream; varying the sing gets in the way of that.

The box only plays classic ICT tunes.

Interesting that the Entertainer is so dominant in the US. Ice Cream trucks in Amsterdam all seem to use the tune from Popeye, which isn't even on that list. (Or maybe it's the same truck every time.)

Working as an ice cream man, that music infects your brain. You’re paid on commission, so if you turn it off, no one knows you’re there, so no one will buy your ice cream. So it must remain on at all times.

Respect the man in the ice cream van!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46BYvLdRkUs

I kinda assumed that new ice cream trucks would just have someone's phone and a big Bluetooth speaker...

It would work out cheaper, and be infinitely more flexible.

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