Summer in New York City means ice cream trucks: bell-jingling fleets of pleasure craft festooned with pictures of perfectly swirled desserts and beaming children, delivering frozen providence into grateful sweaty hands.
But behind those cheery facades simmer turf wars — long-running, occasionally bloody feuds between ice cream vendors for control of the city’s prime selling spots.
And in a recent battle for a lucrative zone of tourist attractions and sunny pedestrian plazas, a place filled with people willing to pay $4 for a plain vanilla cone, no sprinkles, the king of ice cream land has lost to an upstart.
Mister Softee says he has been muscled out of Midtown.
New York Ice Cream, staffed by drivers who used to cover Midtown Manhattan for Mister Softee, has had the area locked down for at least a year, Mister Softee said. The renegade is enforcing its dominance with threats and intimidation that sometimes get physical.
“If one of my drivers goes to Midtown, they’ll bring their trucks in and surround them — a bunch of guys,” said Peter Bouziotis, who runs the Softee depot in the Bronx, which covers Manhattan. “They’ll start banging on the windows.”
