All that comes with it

The world of ice cream isn’t all sprinkles and sauce, it has a dark side too. In 1984 the Scottish city of Glasgow saw horrendous violence during its infamous ice cream wars. The fighting was not just about ice cream sales, the ice cream vans were used as fronts to sell stolen goods and drugs. Rival gangs fought over turf and control of the market. Van drivers who resisted becoming involved were intimidated and punished.

Eighteen year old driver Andrew “Fat Boy” Doyle refused to sell drugs on his round, and as a result the flat in which he lived was set alight in the early hours of the morning. Andrew, along with his father, sister, two brothers, and 18 month old nephew were all killed in the blaze.

In 2002 in Melbourne Australia 46 year old Mr Whippy salesman Francesco Mangione was feuding with his cousin and rival ice cream vendor Denis Giunta over trade routes. Mangione snuck into Giunta’s house and stabbed him 55 times with a home made sword as Giunta stepped out of the shower. Giunta’s wife, who was asleep was awoken by her husband’s screaming, only escaped the same fate by jumping out of the window.

All over the world there are stories of ice cream men slashing tires, hitting each other with baseball bats, or just ending up with their decapitated heads on their bicycle seats. It’s a dangerous world out there. So remember, next time you send your kid out to get you a cone, make sure you send them in a flack jacket.

Popular culture is littered with stories of two people overcoming the class divide in order to carve out a future together. Whether it’s uptown girls living in white bread worlds, Richard Gere romancing his pretty woman or rich kid Andrew McCarthy falling for pretty in pink Molly Ringwald, we are consistently told that love can bridge all boundaries.

Which is a pile of crap of course. We all know that Duckie should have got the girl, Julia Roberts would have given Gere syphilis, and putty faced Billy Joel would never have attracted his model wife Christie Brinkley without his millions.

It’s not just in the world of romance where the distinction between the wrong and the right side of the tracks can cause division. Huddersfield has two different ice cream shops of note: Dixon’s and Longley Farm. Both manufacture their own product, both claim to use only natural ingredients, and both have had a strong presence in the area for over twenty years. But that’s where the similarities end.

Longley Farm is situated in Holmfirth, an area so white and middle class that even the drunks stick out their little finger when taking a swig from their bottles. Dixon’s on the other hand is in Lockwood, a socially deprived inner city area with a high population of people of Pakistani decent. Both stores are always teeming with customers; Longley Farm full of ladies who lunch and yummy mummies, and Dixon’s with Asian elders on the way back from mosque and snotty nosed street urchins.

Longley Farm are perhaps best known for making yogurts and cottage cheese, their ice cream is a sideline sold only at their factory shop. Dixon’s on the other hand only make ice cream. Longley Farm has a wide and varied range of different flavors, from the mundane (mint choc chip), through the exotic (mango), to the just plain weird (stem ginger). Dixon’s make vanilla ice cream, and that’s it. They pore scorn on the high falutin pistachio, raspberry ripple, and rum and raisin. Even chocolate and strawberry is considered a little uppity. No, vanilla is what they’ve got and so it’s what you’ll get, with a Cadbury’s flake stuck in it if you’re lucky.

And because they both make such great ice cream I’d be hard pressed to choose a favorite. The range of choice at Longley is countered by the extremely reasonable prices at Dixon’s. In the end though I’d probably have to come down on the side of the latter purely because it was their fleet of ice cream vans that served the streets of my youth. The taste of Dixon’s ice cream awakens old echos of jangly ice cream van chimes, hurrying down the cobbled roads of Cliff Road, a shiny coin clutched in one sweaty fist and my parent’s hand in the other.

Prompted by yesterday’s post regarding my cacky ice cream maker I came to realize that it was about time that Amy and I indulged in our own bit of ice cream creativity.

Incidentally, as well as being International Ice Cream Week today is international talk like a pirate day. Arrrr, ice cream me hearties; or something to that effect.