Author Archive
From Astoria Park, fireworks show, June 30 2010
– photos by Mitch Waxman
An FDNY fireboat shooting Red White and Blue water in between the Triborough and HellGate Bridges, followed by a cool tugboat, and then a fireworks display framed against the latter bridge. Happy 4th of July!
slipping and stumbling
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The letter arrived just the other day, a demand from certain agencies of the government, demanding a tithe be paid to them. The billing they submitted was accurate and fair, as the error in calculation and omission of a particular document to the bureaucratic process was the fault of my own sloth and sloppy record keeping, and perhaps treasonous given the foreign wars being fought by our nation.
This debt and obligation was not what unbalanced my thoughts, as “into each life a little rain must fall” and your humble narrator is no stranger to poverty and privation. No, it was the hand written note that was attached to the official missive that set my mind ablaze, and torments me when I think about it.
I found myself wandering about the Newtown Pentacle, and was soon in a place of titan architecture defined by those sky flung monuments and cyclopean aspirations called Tower Town.
from wikipedia
Humans attempt to consciously conceal aspects of themselves from others due to shame, or from fear of violence, rejection, harrassment, loss of acceptance, or loss of employment. On a deeper level, humans attempt to conceal aspects of their own self which they are not capable of incorporating psychologically into their conscious being. Families sometimes maintain “family secrets”, obliging family members never discuss disagreeable issues concerning the family, either with those outside the family and sometimes even within the family. Many “family secrets” are maintained by using a mutually agreed-upon construct (an official family story) when speaking with outside members. Agreement to maintain the secret is often coerced through “shaming” and reference to family honor. The information may even be something as trivial as a recipe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Vast and sterile, Tower Town is erected along the so called Center Blvd. in Long Island City, and houses thousands of nervous but otherwise wholesome citizens. Their community treasure is the great littoral parkland that surround their homes, a former industrialized rail terminal on the East River called Gantry Plaza State Park.
A tenuous sense of change and dangerous possibility hangs about, but this clear eyed population of homesteaders remain steadfast in their commitment to this place, and desire a flowering of urban community to arrive. For many years, this has been described as the “next big thing” by Real Estate interests, a sound investment and ground floor investment in New York’s newest residential neighborhood. With the arrival of the second phase of Tower Town and its attendant industry of noisome construction, a disquieting ripple of apprehension affects the lucky few whose economic might has enabled the first wave.
“LeCorbusier’s United Nations building now faces out on the grandest realization of his vision” was what I was thinking when I heard that horrible croaking voice again, the hallucination that something was calling my name… Addled by my paranoid fantasies about the enigmatic notation on that official post I received and the imaginings they had spawned, I became light headed, and found myself staggering away from their facade.
from wikipedia
Once the psychopath has identified a victim, the manipulation phase begins. During the manipulation phase, a psychopath may create a persona or mask, specifically designed to ‘work’ for his or her target. A psychopath will lie to gain the trust of their victim. Psychopaths’ lack of empathy and guilt allows them to lie with impunity; they don’t see the value of telling the truth unless it will help get them what they want.
As interaction with the victim proceeds, the psychopath carefully assesses the victim’s persona. The victim’s persona gives the psychopath a picture of the traits and characteristics valued in the victim. The victim’s persona may also reveal, to an astute observer, insecurities or weaknesses the victim wishes to minimize or hide from view. As an ardent student of human behavior, the psychopath will then gently test the inner strengths and needs that are part of the victim’s private self and eventually build a personal relationship with the victim.
The persona of the psychopath – the “personality” the victim is bonding with – does not really exist. It is built on lies, carefully woven together to entrap the victim. It is a mask, one of many, custom-made by the psychopath to fit the victim’s particular psychological needs and expectations. The victimization is predatory in nature; it often leads to severe financial, physical or emotional harm for the individual. Healthy, real relationships are built on mutual respect and trust; they are based on sharing honest thoughts and feelings. The victim’s mistaken belief that the psychopathic bond has any of these characteristics is the reason it is so successful.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dragging my feet, I adjusted the iPhone playlist that I was listening to at the beginning of this shambling pedestrian journey, and chose a more upbeat soundtrack. Triggering a live recording of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane from Carnegie Hall, but it just made me slip further away. Instead, the option for a playlist heavy on metal was called on. In that withered bladder which beats within my chest, something akin to a fluttering spark was felt, an unfamiliar emotional thing called a feeling.
Often, the music of one’s youth fills the mind of old men with memories. In my case, I was always a miserable cur and socially backward miscreant, a sweat slicked and corpulent pariah convinced that the world had given him a raw deal. From an adult perspective and what I now know of the world, that child should have dropped to the ground and thanked heaven that he was born an American in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the powerful narrative of the songs in this playlist awaken a part of your humble narrator that is not lukewarm and which has been long thought dead.
Violent fantasies and elaborate lists of prior enemies began to manifest, and I day dreamed the destruction of my pursuers as I lead a Napoleonic army of American Peasantry toward capturing some modern bastille, ignoring the fact that sometimes I can’t even convince my dog to follow me.
from wikipedia
Grandiose delusions or delusions of grandeur are principally a subtype of delusional disorder but could possibly feature as a symptom of schizophrenia and manic episodes of bipolar disorder. Grandiose delusions are characterized by fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent, or otherwise very powerful. The delusions are generally fantastic, often with a supernatural, science-fictional, or religious bent (for example, belief that one is an incarnation of Jesus Christ).
Grandiose delusions are distinct from grandiosity, in that the sufferer does not have insight into his loss of touch with reality.
In colloquial usage, one who is said to have ‘delusions of grandeur’ is considered to be one who overestimates one’s own abilities, talents or situation. This is generally due to excessive pride, rather than any actual delusions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along Borden Avenue, I retreated from the Newtown Creek and Tower town, back past the Pulaski Bridge and LIRR tracks, stumbling a few times on the shattered cement of these industrial streets. Unfamiliar sensations were brought forward by the litany of defiance and anger I was utilizing to deafen myself to that insistent gurgling voice which always sounded as if it was just over my shoulder. No matter how loud I set the volume, however, I still perceived its presence.
from wikipedia
Anger is an emotion. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline.[1] Some view anger as part of the fight or flight brain response to the perceived threat of harm. Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside force. The English term originally comes from the term anger of Old Norse language. Anger can have many physical and mental consequences.
The external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language, physiological responses, and at times in public acts of aggression. Humans and non-human animals for example make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare their teeth, and stare. Anger is a behavioral pattern designed to warn aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. Rarely does a physical altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the participants. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of “what has happened to them,” psychologists point out that an angry person can be very well mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The note on the letter, you see, warned me about particular investigations in the neighborhoods surrounding the Newtown Creek, and that I not delve too deeply into certain things, lest I attract more unwanted attention upon myself and draw the ire of that which might exist down here.
It’s receipt made me first believe it to be a prank or mistake, but investigation revealed it to be legitimate. In typical fashion, I retreated into denial and isolation- as detailed here, and here. Several hours on, all I knew was rage and a helpless resignation was setting in, and I would need to strike a bargain with it if ever solace would find a home in my thoughts again.
Perhaps there was something I could have done to avert this, been more careful, or just never noticed the thrice damned Newtown Creek.
from grief.com
Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this?
guilty agony
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Reeling from the implications of those utterances which- I must have imagined- were experienced in DUPBO, I scuttled fiercely away, hoping to reorient myself toward pursuits and thought patterns more comfortable, wholesome, and safe…
I headed for the long corridor that will connect to the Hunters Point South development, along that industrial roadway which begins at the old Vernon Avenue Bridge and which is defined by those ancient rail yards of the LIRR which lie just beyond the fences.
Along the way, Al Smith’s monument served as a polestar of navigation and material consistency throughout the swirling of my thoughts, as I drifted along numbly imagining that my name was being called from the direction of the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The Cotard delusion or Cotard’s syndrome or Walking Corpse Syndrome, also known as nihilistic or negation delusion, is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead (either figuratively or literally), do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. Rarely, it can include delusions of immortality.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Visible from storied Greenpoint, a group of small boats illegally utilize the former bridge landing as an ad hoc marina, and there was a group of men climbing over the crumbling cement to access one of them. Their presence disturbed me, and I wondered if their party’s appearance was not accidental, but rather something covert.
Oh, why did I open that letter, the one whose dire message will forever rob me of peaceful sleep and whose implications have penetrated even into my dreams?
Seldom does good news arrive by postal missive, in my experience.
Deciding that these otherwise innocent characters might be a threat to me due to my gentle habits and extraordinary physical cowardice, I scuttled on.
from wikipedia
Cowardice, in general terms, is the perceived failure to demonstrate sufficient robustness in the face of a challenging situation. The term describes a personality trait which is viewed as a negative characteristic and has been frowned upon (see norms) within most, if not all global cultures, while courage, typically viewed as its direct opposite, is generally rewarded and encouraged.
Cowards are usually seen to have avoided or refused to engage in a confrontation or struggle which has been deemed good or righteous by the wider culture in which they live. On a more mundane level, the label may be applied to those who are regarded as too frightened or overwhelmed to defend their rights or those of others from aggressors in their lives.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one moves from 54th avenue to 53rd, a pleasant enough scene awaits one observant to the ecstasies of old Long Island City’s low declination and squamously set building stock. Enormous in footprint, but small in height, the vast oceanic skies of the metropolitan archipelago peel open in the manner of some vast scroll framed by brick and fence.
The horizon becomes a three point perspective lesson, with a Shining City rising and occludes the horizon, over a River of Sound.
from wikipedia
In psychology, confabulation is the spontaneous narrative report of events that never happened. It consists of the creation of false memories, perceptions, or beliefs about the self or the environment usually as a result of neurological or psychological dysfunction. When it is a matter of memory, confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, or the confused application of true memories. Confabulations are difficult to differentiate from delusions and from lying. With respect to memory, wild confabulations about one’s past are rare in the absence of organic causes (e.g., brain damage), and the term “confabulation” is often restricted to these types of distortions. In contrast, even neurologically intact people are susceptible to memory errors or confusions due to psychological causes (see false memory).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Vast agglutiations of warehouse, distribution point, and industry can be observed here- best on a weekend as the place is quite busy and well populated during the week.
On weekend mornings, the curious indications of habitation by wandering mendicants are observed- bits of food, a worn shoe, or a soggy collection of windblown rags bearing an impression that suggests the shape of something very like a man. During winter months, the unremarked but obvious effects of camp fire upon ice is seen around discarded oil drums and other cast off containers.
from wikipedia
The core symptom of depersonalization disorder is the subjective experience of unreality, and as such there are no clinical signs. Common descriptions are: watching oneself from a distance; out-of-body experiences; a sense of just going through the motions; feeling as though one is in a dream or movie; not feeling in control of one’s speech or physical movements; and feeling detached from one’s own thoughts or emotions. Individuals with the disorder commonly describe a feeling as though time is ‘passing’ them by and they are not in the notion of the present. These experiences may cause a person to feel uneasy or anxious since they strike at the core of a person’s identity and consciousness.
Some of the more common factors that exacerbate dissociative symptoms are negative effects, stress, subjective threatening social interaction, and unfamiliar environments. Factors that tend to diminish symptoms are comforting interpersonal interactions, intense physical or emotional stimulation, and relaxation. Factors identified as relieving symptom severity such as diet, exercise, alcohol and fatigue, are listed by others as worsening symptoms.
Fears of going crazy, brain damage, and losing control are common complaints. Individuals report occupational impairments as they feel they are working below their ability, and interpersonal troubles since they have an emotional disconnection from those they care about. Neuropsychological testing has shown deficits in attention, short-term memory and spatial-temporal reasoning. Depersonalization disorder is associated with cognitive disruptions in early perceptual and attentional processes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Curious, the idiom of the place is purely functional, with vast sheets of cement and steel rebar flung about. Everywhere, slanted planes designed to accommodate trucking descend from the sidewalk into scummy puddles which collect at the bottom of the ramps. Fantastic machines which serve the cinema and television industries show just part of their arcane mechanisms over those great gates which occlude them.
from wikipedia
Akathisia may range in intensity from a mild sense of disquiet or anxiety, to a total inability to sit still, accompanied by overwhelming anxiety, malaise, and severe dysphoria (manifesting as an almost indescribable sense of terror and doom). The condition is difficult for the patient to describe and is often misdiagnosed. When misdiagnosis occurs in antipsychotic neuroleptic-induced akathisia, more antipsychotic neuroleptics may be prescribed, potentially worsening the symptoms. High-functioning patients have described the feeling as a sense of inner tension and torment or chemical torture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking south down second street, toward the mouth of the Newtown Creek where it congeals and mixes with the East River, and where the Hunters Point South project is in its earliest stages.
To the right is Water Taxi Beach’s new home, and the left looks nearly all the way back to the intersection of 54th and 53rd avenues. Behind me lies the beginnings of Tower Town, and the vast new constructions just beginning at 51st avenue.
This point, far from the Newtown Creek, is where I stopped imagining that gurgling auditory murmur that seemed to be repeating my name over and over.
from wikipedia
Emotional detachment in the first sense above often arises from psychological trauma and is a component in many anxiety and stress disorders. The person, while physically present, moves elsewhere in the mind, and in a sense is “not entirely present”, making them sometimes be seen as preoccupied or distracted. In other cases, the person may seem fully present but operate merely intellectually when emotional connection would be appropriate. This may present an extreme difficulty in giving or receiving empathy and can be related to the spectrum of narcissistic personality disorder.
Thus, such detachment is often not as outwardly obvious as other psychiatric symptoms; people with this problem often have emotional systems that are in overdrive. They have a hard time being a loving family member. They avoid activities, places, and people associated with any traumatic events they have experienced. The dissociation can also lead to lack of attention and, hence, to memory problems and in extreme cases, amnesia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crossing 2nd street, I began to feel safer, and convinced myself that the vocalizations were mere hallucination. Often it is easier to consider oneself mad, than to confront the existential realities of the Newtown Pentacle head on. Sometimes it is better to just believe that you’re just crazy… that is what I was thinking as I headed for Tower Town, but I’m all ‘effed up.
Would that I had never opened that letter… nay… that it was ever delivered…
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human at wikisource
ART DANGEROUS TO THE ARTIST.— When art seizes violently on an individual it draws him back to the conceptions of those ages in which art flourished most mightily, and then it effects a retrogression in him. The artist acquires increasing reverence for sudden excitations, believes in gods and demons, instills a soul into nature, hates the sciences, becomes changeable of mood as were the men of antiquity and longs for an overthrowing of everything unfavorable to art, and he does this with all the vehemence and unreasonableness of a child. The artist is in himself already a retarded being, inasmuch as he has halted at games that pertain to youth and childhood: to this there is now added his gradual retrogression to earlier times. Thus there at last arises a violent antagonism between him and the men of his period, of his own age, and his end is gloomy; just as, according to the tales told in antiquity, Homer and Aeschylus at last lived and died in melancholia.
isolated phenomena
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Would that I never opened that hated letter. Oh, unhappy act.
A cloak of comfortable ignorance would still drape your humble narrator, and this existential terror would not subsume every moment of my days. In no uncertain terms, a large and shadowy cabal has taken notice of this- your Newtown Pentacle- and focused their attentions upon me. Vast machinations, whose byzantine splendor indicates a guiding master hand, closes about my throat. Proof of it arrived just the other day…
I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
Schizophrenia is often described in terms of positive and negative (or deficit) symptoms. The term positive symptoms refers to symptoms that most individuals do not normally experience but are present in schizophrenia. They include delusions, auditory hallucinations, and thought disorder, and are typically regarded as manifestations of psychosis. Negative symptoms are things that are not present in schizophrenic persons but are normally found in healthy persons, that is, symptoms that reflect the loss or absence of normal traits or abilities. Common negative symptoms include flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia), lack of desire to form relationships (asociality), and lack of motivation (avolition). Research suggests that negative symptoms contribute more to poor quality of life, functional disability, and the burden on others than do positive symptoms.
A third symptom grouping, the disorganization syndrome, is sometimes described, and includes chaotic speech, thought, and behavior. There is evidence for a number of other symptom classifications.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon receipt of that malign missive, delivered by a sturdy Postal Employee who claims his name is “Mr. Lee”, a fugue state came over me and solace was sought in sanguine familiarity.
Often, when subsumed by malignity in my thought process, your humble narrator seeks out the familiar- something quantifiable, knowable, and grand. Strapping on my camera, and setting my iPhone to a playlist heavy on early Patti Smith, I descended from the densely populated hills of Astoria and set off for the Newtown Creek.
By the time that my playlist had cycled through the first 20 songs, and hit the Mountain Goats song “Lovecraft in Brooklyn“, I was in DUPBO (Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp).
from wikipedia
Persecutory delusions, also known as querulant delusions, are the most common type of delusions.
The affected person believes they are being persecuted. Specifically, they have been defined as containing two central elements:
– The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur,
– The individual thinks that the persecutor has the intention to cause harm.
– The perceived persecution may involve the theme of being followed, harassed, cheated, poisoned or drugged, conspired against, spied on, attacked, or obstructed in the pursuit of goals.
Sometimes the delusion is isolated and fragmented, but sometimes are well-organized belief systems involving a complex set of delusions (“systematized delusions”). People with a set of persecutory delusions may believe, for example, they are being followed by government organizations because the “persecuted” person has been falsely identified as a spy. These systems of beliefs can be so broad and complex that they can explain everything that happens to the person.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The roaring silence of the place, which normally enhances the wonders observed in this forgotten and lonely angle between Long Island City and Greenpoint, did not comfort me. Suddenly, I was pulling the ear buds from my sense organs, as I perceived an antiphonal muttering that sounded like the hebraic ritual name assigned to me by prelates at the coming of age ceremonies well known to even Gentile readers.
Of course, it was just the coincidence of aural background sounds, the vast traffic flow and heavy infrastructure all around DUPBO causes everything around to vibrate slightly creating a sustained field of infrasound that is just beyond the limits of human auditory capabilities. I’m sure an Elephant or Cetacean could tell us what it sounds like, if only we could understand their languages.
from wikipedia
The ancient world viewed hallucinations as it did most of the natural world, with awe and superstition. As such, it was viewed as either a gift or curse by God, or the gods (depending on the specific culture). The oracles of ancient Greece were known to experience auditory hallucinations while breathing in certain neurologically active vapors, while the more pervasive delusions and symptomology were often viewed as possession by demonic forces as punishment for misdeeds.
Treatments
Treatment in the ancient world is ill documented, but there are some cases of therapeutics being used to attempt treatment, while the common treatment was sacrifice and prayer in an attempt to placate the gods. The Dark Ages saw the most horrific accounts where the suffered of auditory hallucinations were subjected to trepanning or trial as a witch. In other cases of extreme symptomology individuals were seen as being reduced to animals by a curse, these individuals were either left on the streets or imprisoned in insane asylums. It was the latter response that eventually led to modern psychiatric hospitals.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking around me, only the poetry of the street stood, and I experienced goose bumps despite the sultry climes suffered by all New Yorkers that day. I imagined that… it must have been an imagining… a mind fever brought on by dehydration or thermal exhaustion… I imagined, damn it- imagined- that I heard a heavy splash in the waters of Newtown Creek, just over the wall separating DUPBO from its waterline…
I will not admit to it, running, except to say that I scuttled away… quickly, and set my iPhone to periodically email my location to Our Lady of the Pentacle should the need arise for her to attempt to find my remains.
from wikipedia
Hypervigilance is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. Hypervigilance is also accompanied by a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion. Other symptoms include: abnormally increased arousal, a high responsiveness to stimuli and a constant scanning of the environment for threats. Hypervigilance can be a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder and various types of anxiety disorder. It is distinguished from paranoia. Paranoid states, such as those in schizophrenia can seem superficially similar, but are in fact characteristically different.
Hypervigilance is differentiated from dysphoric hyperarousal in that the person remains cogent and aware of his surroundings. In dysphoric hyperarousal the PTSD victim may lose contact with reality and re-experience the traumatic event verbatim. Where there have been multiple traumas, a person may become hypervigilant and suffer severe anxiety attacks intense enough to induce a delusional state where the effect of the traumas overlap: e.g. one remembered firefight may seem too much like another for the person to maintain calm. This can result in the thousand yard stare.
bazaars in the dusk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mrs. Softee is lonely during the torrid nights, and wonders for whom her man plays his song, knowing that Mister Softee is no damn good.
One of the many occupations enjoyed by your humble narrator (who started working at 7, shining shoes in a mafioso barber shop in 1980’s Brooklyn) was as a Good Humor man. I drove one of the old fashioned trucks, the kind with the little door on the back, and wore the white uniform with a little change maker on the belt. I’ve also worked as a dish washer, pancake cook, supermarket cart and bag boy, aquarium service man, film store clerk, corporate drone, drawn and written comic books, been a fine art mover, advertising studio technician, photo retoucher- once I even took a job shoveling a seven foot by 20 foot pile of dog shit into plastic bags.
Good Humor man is still my favorite.
from wikipedia
Good Humor is an American brand of ice cream novelties sold from ice cream trucks as well as stores and other retail outlets. Originally, Good Humors were chocolate coated ice cream bars on a stick, but the line was expanded over the years to include a wide range of novelties. The Good Humor company started in Youngstown, Ohio during the early 1920s and covered most of the country by the mid 1930s. Good Humor became a fixture in American popular culture, and at its peak in the 1950s, the company operated 2,000 “sales cars”.
In 1961, Good Humor was acquired by Thomas J. Lipton, the U.S. subsidiary of the international Unilever conglomerate. Profits declined when the baby boomers aged and costs increased because of labor issues, gasoline and insurance. The company sold its fleet in 1978, but continued to distribute its products through grocery stores and independent street vendors. By 1984, Good Humor returned to profitability. Starting in 1989, Unilever expanded Good Humor through its acquisition of Gold Bond Ice Cream that included the Popsicle brand. Four years later, Unilever bought Isaly Klondike and the Breyers Ice Cream Company. Good Humor-Breyers is now a large producer of branded ice cream and frozen novelties with nine plants around the country.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A two man operation, the little white truck had actual bells which you’d ring while the other guy drove. It was a one man truck, but for safety reasons, was staffed by two. We’d drive around our route in Canarsie, ringing the bells and drawing the attention of children- who would begin a St. Vitus dance at the merest hint of the sound. Part of the job was to drive slow, allowing the kids to beg for money from their parents, who were generally arranged on folding chairs in front of their homes drinking red wine from a soda glass with floating ice cubes. Vulnerable to their kids, single dollars would be produced and their progeny would jet toward our position, which was mid block, to allow maximum sales. A good night would witness kids a couple of blocks away at the curb waiting.
Ka-chinng.
goodhumortrucks.com has some restrictions attached to their content, so I’m not going to provide the cursory quotation here, but will instead direct you to click here to see what a Good Humor Truck looked like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One night, my friend- whose great claim to fame at that time was that he was able to grow a full mustache- pointed out that Mr. Softee had entered our route and was pilfering sales from us by advancing to that next block and arriving there while we were serving the strawberry shortcake, chocolate eclair, toasted almond, and creamsicle pops from our freezer on the first. We instituted a chase, screaming over the roar of our engine, and soon found ourselves in a high speed chase on the service roads which follow the course of the Belt Parkway (which allowed no commercial vehicles). Of course, Ice Cream trucks of the era lost much of their potential motility to the compressors which kept the goods frozen and we never actually got moving much faster than 35 mph. Past Kings Plaza, Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, Bay Ridge, and under the Gowanus- Mr. Softee evaded us- but we endeavored to serve our revenge cold.
Cold is best, when you’re a Good Humor Man bent on beating Mr. Softee to a pulp.
from wikipedia
Mister Softee is a United States-based ice cream truck franchisor popular in the Northeast. It was founded by William and James Conway (Oct. 30, 1927 – May 28, 2006) in 1956 in Philadelphia. It is one of the largest franchisor of soft ice cream in the United States. It has about 350 franchisees operating 600 trucks in 15 states. The company is headquartered in Runnemede, New Jersey. It is still run by the Conway family; James Conway, Jr. is now President.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mr. Softee lost us somewhere around Williamsburg (a horrible part of town in the 1980’s), and our efforts at vengeance were stymied. Nearly out of fuel, with steam rising threateningly from under the hood, we were forced to swallow our pride and mourn the profits lost. Our adolescent hearts did not consider the confectionary disappointment of the children of Canarsie.
The pattern that we had established, my friend and I, was that he would pick up the truck at the yard and return it for a greater share of the night’s take. He would pick me up at my parent’s house and drop me off at the end of the shift, but as we were quite close to the yard, that night we went together.
That was the first night that I helped bring the truck back to its yard, and although I didn’t know it at the time, it was the first time I entered storied Greenpoint and experienced that ribbon of sense shattering abnormality called the Newtown Creek.
from amny.com
Mister Softee isn’t just dispensing vanilla ice cream this summer, he’s also trying to dish out soft-serve justice to cone-head wannabes.
Mister Softee distributors aren’t soft or sweet when it comes to rogue franchisees who routinely rip off the company’s trademarks without paying the licensing fees.
They hire private investigators to tail imposters and send the U.S. Marshals Service to tow offending trucks. They even spend tens of thousands of dollars every year to sue about 40 truck owners for lifting the cone-head logo, the white-and-blue color scheme and the jingle.
“These guys are mobile,” said Peter Bouzio, the Mister Softee distributor for the Bronx and Manhattan. “It’s an uphill battle.”In midtown Thursday, an ice cream truck called “Softee Treats” infringed on Mister Softee’s trademark, according to the company’s lawyer.
“I’m not Mister Softee, nowhere on my truck does it say Mister Softee,” shouted the ice cream vendor, who declined to give his name.
