June 10, 2006 / Perspective / The Brooklyn Angle

SHH! It’s Mr. Softee

By Gersh Kuntzman

The Brooklyn Paper

The Brooklyn Papers / Julie Rosenberg

Mike Serpin, a Mister Softee driver. All the Mister Softee trucks are parked along the Gowanus Canal on Carroll Street.

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It has been wisely said that I scream, you scream and, indeed, we all scream for ice cream.

And sometimes, the ice cream screams back — but not for much longer.

This will be the last summer to enjoy a sound that is as synonymous with summer as chirping birds, the crack of a baseball bat or the honking of cars on the Long Island-bound Belt Parkway: Starting next summer, the drivers of Mister Softee trucks will no longer be able to play their company’s beloved jingle when the truck is parked.

The law is an affront not only to lovers of soft ice cream, but to history buffs. After all, Mister Softee is celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer (whatever you do, don’t send him an ice-cream cake).

As it is now, drivers can only play a 10-second blast of the jingle every 10 minutes. But even that was too much for some savage beasts who refused to be calmed by the lilting jingle.

“The old people, they always complain,” said Mike Serpin, a Mister Softee driver who works a Canarsie route.

Serpin was preparing for the day’s run by stocking up at the Mister Softee depot, a parking lot on Carroll Street near the Gowanus Canal, where all 80 Brooklyn trucks are parked. Don’t look for it in four years; it’ll be condos.

“The elderly don’t like the song,” he said. “They get pissed off.”

Perhaps they just don’t know the words.

As this reporter revealed almost a decade ago (in a story that was subsequently ripped off by every reporter in town, not that this reporter is bitter!), the Mister Softee jingle is a classic that combines custard-style imagery with a toe-tapping pop tune:

The creamiest, dreamiest soft ice cream you get from Mister Softee.
For a refreshing delight supreme, look for Mister Softee.
My milkshakes and my sundaes and my cones are such a treat.
Listen for my store on wheels ding-a-ling down the street.
The creamiest, dreamiest soft ice cream you get from Mister Softee.
For a refreshing delight supreme, look for Mister Softee.
S-O-F-T double-E
Mister Softee!

The song, of course, was not always a pariah. But the perfect storm of gentrification, the advent of the anonymous, 311 complaint, and our current obesity obsession has made the Mister Softee jingle a death knell to some people.

Still, is it fair that a driver risks an $800 ticket just to signal to taxpaying ice-cream lovers where he’s parked?

“If I get a ticket like that, it’s three days pay gone,” Serpin said. “I play the song for 10 seconds, and all the kids run outside, but then they can’t find me. I can play the song if I’m cruising up the block, but by the time the kid hears it, I’m gone.

“I’m having a very bad year.”

As they say in Brooklyn, wait ’til next year.

Check out the Mister Softee sheet music at http://www.mistersoftee.com/music.asp.