Cool Or Not Cool: Parents Who Still Fight To Ban Ice Cream in Prospect Park?

I should begin this post with a disclaimer: I am not a parent. I have never been a parent. I hope to one day be a parent, but until then I recognize that I have absolutely no authority on parenting. I say this so that I may nip in the bud any comments suggesting I don’t know anything about parenting. You’re right! I don’t!

Yet this post might upset some parents. Perhaps it’ll make other parents happy. I don’t know exactly what the outcome will be. What I do know is that there is a group of parents threatening one of the most sacred rights of every visitor to Prospect Park: ice cream. And if they're successful, our summers will be a little bit less sweet. Our hot afternoons a little less tuneful. Our appetites less satiated. “Give me ice cream or give me death!” I’ve been known to say. I guess I’ll have to take death, for if a group of radical Park Slope parents with an anti-ice cream agenda have their way, singing trucks full of frozen, creamy, delicious treats and carts of sugary, icy snacks will no longer traverse the open roads and trails of the 585 acre park.

According the the New York Post, local online group Park Slope Parents has recently witnessed a flood of anti-ice cream truck and Italian ice cart posts. Basically, it boils down to this: parents are getting in fights with their children inside the park because the kids want ice cream. Rather than just telling their kid "No," they want to completely ban the carts.

Oh boy, where to start? Children are pesky little accessories. Sure, they’re pretty cute and you get to dress them up in tiny clothes, but there’s also this whole parenting thing that comes along with having one. Sometimes they want things (like toys, or ice cream, or trips to Disney World), and it’s the job of the parent to say “No.” Did I miss something? Are Park Slope parents so incapable of saying “No” that they just want to ban all temptation from the lives of their children? Let’s be serious. Why should everyone, including ADULTS who are capable of making their own dietary decisions, have to suffer an ice cream ban? [Ed Note: What is up with this neighborhood and the need to ban things???]

Fucked in Park Slope covered this story a few years ago. We even ran a nice little debate about it, and asked Breeders and Ballers for their opinion on the matter. We thought the issue had mercifully died. I guess we were mistaken. Here’s hoping it disappears pretty quickly this time, because I think we can all agree that a world without ice cream is a world without joy.