Pilot Online – October 16, 2007 via the Consumerist:
An ice cream vendor who has been fined repeatedly for playing music from his truck has challenged the city’s regulations stipulating that peddlers of the frozen treats can only use a bell – and only for up to three seconds.
His attorney, Kevin Martingayle, argued in court papers that Portsmouth’s prohibition against ice cream trucks playing music is unconstitutional and a restriction on commercial speech
Sanchez drives a truck for Norfolk-based Jumpn’ G’s Ice Cream. He was convicted three times this summer in Portsmouth General District Court for the illegal use of noise from an ice cream truck.
.
I drove an ice-cream van as a summer job. After 8 weeks I couldn’t tell whether the chimes were playing or not ,without a concious effort , and once I stopped was completely unable to tell whether or not I’d played them. Best clue was whether anyone came to buy.
When I was a kid, you could hear the ice cream truck coming quite a ways off. You had time to run inside and badger your mom for money, run back outside and still have time to flag down the truck. Now I’m grown and have my own kid, I occasionally see the ice cream truck with very quite music, cruise past at 30 m.p.h. I wonder how he does any business at all.
I’ve had fights in my office because I demand that neighboring cubicles turn off their radios. Amazingly, people think that they have the right to disturb a medium that people are forced to share. If I had a choice I would leave to another cubicle but that is not an option.
Sound pollution and cigarette pollution should be banned from public places.
Way back when I was a kid living in the sunny south where the temperature and humidity could be in the nineties, the sound of the ice cream truck was as important as any other emergency vehicle.
There was a couple of years though when the truck serving my neighborhood had a sound system boasting harmonic distortion levels of at least seventy percent. You wanted to wait for him with a shotgun.
Perry
It wouldn’t be summer without those musical trucks!
I think some grown-ups forgot what its like to be a kid. Its like that episode of Simpsons where the passed laws to get rid of all the kids-oriented things.
I disagree.
The biggest threat to humanity are lunatic voters that are afforded the right to vote in lunatic rulers that are allowed to play out their “political erotica”.
* “Political erotica” is the term Putin used to describe how George W got into his Iraq fiasco. So fitting !
I agree in silencing the ice cream truck. It’s annoying. Not to mention the guy who drives the truck through our neighborhood looks like a scumbag. You wonder what he is really trying to do by driving that truck and meeting young kids.
Sigh!
Is there anything in this world that couldn’t benefit someone by being banned by everyone?
Mines a 99!
Yeah, you never know what they might be selling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_Dreams
Seriously though, kept to a reasonable volume, this should just be a normal sound of summer.
Now I’m no spring chicken… but people how old are you gleeless geriatrics to want to take away the sound of summer?
What’s next? No using the fire hydrants to play in the water?
No kids allowed in public pools?
Children may ONLY ride bikes between the hours 1 and 1:15pm and ONLY on Saturdays???
Why don’t you all go down to local VFW hall, get into a canasta game and bitch about how they don’t play enough friggin Andy Williams you old coots!
Damn geezers! Get off our LAN!
Cursor_
The problem with these trucks is they don’t drive around anymore. Not if you live in a mildly congested town or citiy. They park in a few places, like near parks, and play the jingle repeatedly. If you happen to live near the park it’s a nightmare. “Hey, I’m just tryin’ ta makes a livin’!” Tough. That’s why they have commercial and industrial zones. Go park there and play your jingle but don’t do it outside my window.
#1 – Good to know that PC is gaining foot by the day.
What does this story have to do with Personal Computers?
(alternate response)
Do you want some cheese to go with that whine?
#4 – Amazingly, people think that they have the right to disturb a medium that people are forced to share. If I had a choice I would leave to another cubicle but that is not an option.
Also amazingly, some people are so uptight, that they wish to wreck everyone else’s happiness just because they can find none of their own. You don’t like hearing the radio. The other guy doesn’t like not hearing the radio. You can’t strike a compromise? You think its okay to inflict your preferences on everyone else?
Most of them have the amplifier turned WAY UP and the sound is COMPLETELY DISTORTED, so people complain ! Turn it down to a more reasonable level or TURN IT OFF ! And CHANGE THE TUNE ONCE IN A WHILE !
they started giving noise tickets out to the Mr Softy trucks
a few years ago here in NYC… i mean give me a break,
it’s F’kn NYC for christ sake…
makes no sense… we never sleep, tons of after hours clubs, illegal games, yuppies from NJ up all night drunk off their
ass in front of the clubs & restaraunts. you can get ANYTHING you want here if you have enough money…
-and someones main gripe was the Mr. Softy truck?
who the heck is thinking up these laws?
-s
The idiots that run my local government banded iced cream vans some years ago due to some kids getting run over.
#17 – My reply to the other guy was a legitimate question.
Ahh the sounds of summers past. 1967 cruising in my merrymobil listning to “little brown jug” over and over. The player for some reason had a rheostat to speed up the song or slow it down. One thing I remember is you could not make money moving. Park it in an area with kids. I paid my way through Purdue that way.
#20 – Your reply was a question???
Two, in fact… as indicated by the question marks…
AMAZING is this true….
It has to be right i mean it’s on the internet. But that guy rocks. So this guy plays music like any other ice cream truck anyware and he get a fine was it???
Tell me was he using a hands free kit???
The ice cream truck in my old neighborhood would cruise through over and over again with the volume on his pa turned up full. 100 db of distorted nursery rhyme songs. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not a pleasant “sound of summer.”
I slightly annoying ice cream truck is the least of my troubles concerning noise pollution. Not much is being done about these cars and vans with the super powered bass speakers blasting away. Or the gutted mufflers of some cars and most motorcycles, that pass by. And come an election cycle, there’s the occasional recorded message, blaring away from a candidate’s hired vehicle! But let’s not have an ice cream truck letting us know that something we might actually enjoy, is close by. Noooooo!