h a l f b a k e r yNumber one on the no-fly list
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If a cop can hear my music 50 feet away from the source, I'll get a ticket and pay a hefty fine. So why is it perfectly legal for the 4 or 5 (yes, there really are that many) ice cream trucks to drive circles around my house for hours on end with that annoying "dum de dum dum de" music blaring through
the P.A. system? What I propose is that they find a different way of getting the message out that they are there. Maybe with flames blasting overhead, or a 5 second snippet of the offending music with a lengthened period of silence in between. But the best idea I could think of is this: In the neighborhoods the ice cream trucks frequent the most, set up designated stop points, like bus stops. At predetermined times, the ice cream truck could stop there, play the first part of "La Cucaracha" for 7 seconds, and wait. The kids will come to them, purchase goods, and go about their merry way. I'm happy, they're happy.
NEW ADDITION 7-2: I just realized that it isn't so much the noise as it is the same damn songs (just think how much it sucks when homepages play the same midi songs over and over). If nothing else, they should at least put on an oldies station or have the driver tell stories in his native tongue to alert everyone.
Phalanx Close-In Weapons System
http://www.chinfo.n...apons/wep-phal.html
User [kaiserb]'s URL, moved from his annotation. [bristolz, May 11 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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Just so as to be clear, AA, is that "hoedown"... or "ho' down". Either way's fine, really. I commiserate all the same. |
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"Ho down" popped into my head after I typed the words "Ice Cream Truck," and even though it meant nothing, it seemed like a great idea. |
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Isn't the typical ice cream truck customer not the sort of person who's going to plan ahead well enough to meet a scheduled ice cream stop? |
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Isn't the typical ice cream truck operator not the sort of person who can reliably locate matching shoes, let alone keep a schedule? |
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AfroAssault, let them have their ice cream. And you have my dispensation to play your music as loud as you want, as long as you periodically stop to sell Bomb-Pops or that ice cream that looks like a frog's head with gumballs for eyes. |
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Uncle Nutsy- I will come drive circles by your house blaring my music for about 45 minutes, then wait 10 more, then do it again 4 or 5 times every day. I will sell you a single popsicle for the same price you could walk down the street and buy 2 boxes of them, and, just to make things more difficult, I will only know how to speak the following words in English: "What?""Hello.""Hello what?" and "What hello?". Then, when you try driving down the street, I'll swerve at random times thereby disabling you from passing or getting to your destination. Just to put the icing on the cake, I will also give you dirty looks every time I see you. I just described every ice cream man in my area. |
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I find it strange that people buy from ice-cream trucks when they wouldn't even consider having ice-cream otherwise. I once saw a queue of about ten people by the truck in my street at 8:30 pm in February, with six inches of snow on the ground. The same sort of person will buy hot-dogs, doughnuts and cotton-candy at a carnival or fair at nine in the morning, apparently simply because he can. |
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The annoying music alerts kids to the approaching goodies in time to run and pester their folks for a couple of bucks, you see. How about you can purchase a limited range FM transmitter that sends a signal from your stereo, radio, whatever, and when an ice cream truck weaves into range a switching device in the truck pipes the signal from your stereo into the truck's loudspeakers. That way you've got *your* music to listen to. (Perhaps a city ordinance could require these switching units in all ice cream vending vehicles?) |
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But if each truck kind of staked out a home turf--a park, a playground--and spent most of the time there as you suggest it would cut down on the aggravation. I'll give it a yes-vote. |
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Alternatively, hire a bunch of out-of-work actors to run alongside the trucks holding their heads and screaming, "Aaah! Stop the music! My head is going to explode! You're killing me!" whenever the trucks come onto your street. |
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I'd welcome any music at any volume other than "The Entertainer". Wonderful Joplin piece and all but it does loose a certain amount of appeal after, I'd say, the fortieth tinkly time. |
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I understand AfroAssaults point loud and clear. I once had to shout at driver "Is there a volume Control on that thing?" with the "Hello" and "What" being the only response... The outside speakers on ice cream truck volume was well over 100 decibels...
Anyhoo, as I was saying before I realized what time it was earlier...
Got my Towering Inferno CD: Kaddish (Most Frightening Music I've ever heard in my life-Brain Eno): Track 8: Reverse Field...
Next day, Pulled up next to Ice Cream Truck in friends car, which Just Happened to have a worthy stereo in it with aforementioned CD playing and just let it roar while I ordered an Ice Cream "What?" He said as he recognized my devilish grin... Never happened again, Ice Cream Truck volume was suddenly down to normal from then on.
Moral: There are ways to break the Ice, and then there are ways to break the Ice Cream Man. |
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If Ice Cream trucks could claim their "home turf", could they congregate into gangs? Could there be drive-by shootings from Ice Cream trucks?
That concept has GOT to be baked...distract the rival gang trucks with your most annoying Ice-Cream truck muzak...Better yet, give the truck arms and watch them brawl! I'm sorry...I seem to have misplaced my brainy-thing. |
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The Ice Cream Wars in Glasgow weren't really much to do with Ice Cream. They were just an inter-gang feud with a Strawberry Mivvy/murder element tagged on. They are a thing of the past (unless they are now conducted in secret). |
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If all you old antiques would just turn your hearing aids off you would not have any problems at all.
And yes the music does have a volume control and we usually turn it down when we finish working(about dusk). |
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are you the one that urinates against the schoolwall and then returns to his van with unwashed hands to serve revolting swill to our children? just asking |
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You probably won't believe me, but there have been two cases of drug-dealing ice-cream vans in my area... one was an ice-cream van situated outside a Skate park all day, and into the evening. Busted. |
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The other is the Ice-cream van near me with no music and blacked out windows, that deals weed over the counter - I kid you not. Still going strong too. |
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Aside from this being a rant... |
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[AfroAssault] should use a little psychological warfare. Get a recording of the ice cream man's music and play it at random intervals throughout the day. Eventually, the kids in the neighborhood (and therefore the parents) will become desensitized to the sound. Kids will cease to run for the truck as, likely as not, there is no truck. When business falls off, the trucks will stop coming around. |
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If I hear that damn ice cream man come by one more time. I am going to go crazy, before I go crazy I will have a Phalanx gun mounted on the roof of my house. I figure the people in my neighborhood will hear about 12 seconds of dum de dum de de de dum.... followed by a painfully loud whining scream of the Phalanx gun. After about 2 seconds all that would be left to do is fill the smoking hole in the street with some HMAC mix and clean up all the leftover shrapnel from the ice cream truck (usually a converted burrito wagon, with a taco bender inside). Just think the brief gap between seconds 12 and 14 would be filled with the sound of shredding metal and someone saying "Hello, What" or "Hello, Que" ..... |
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[admin: URL moved to links, above. -bristolz] |
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ahhh no more crappy music. |
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Ah, [phoenix], what a great solution. Nips it at the roots. |
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Maybe instead of playing loud music, the ice cream
trucks should just hand out pagers to the kiddies. Then
the next time the truck comes around, the pagers will
alert the kids to the the truck's presence. |
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--and teach them the importance of pagers when selling addictive substances to others. I'm all for it! |
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Hells bells: A church in my hometown installed a computerized bell system. It played every tired old hymn imaginable, one per quarter hour, loudly enough to be heard throughout the city. Extra long playing sessions were held at special times, such as Noon and Midnight. |
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Wasn't long before the residents across the street sued. Made newspapers across the nation (back pages). The church was forced to cut back. |
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If the Ice-Cream man had a GPS locator system and a web page, he wouldn't need the horrid music. |
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//I think having knowledge of that an ice cream truck is nearing has come in handy for me far more often than police, fire, or ambulance sirens have, and yet we put up with those other petty annoyances for the good they bring right?//
If a firetruck drove 8 mph around your block for about 25 minutes with the sirens wailing, things would be much different. |
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i had to chuckle when i saw the name of this thread. the icecream truck where we spend weekends has been playing that "ho down" standard "turkey in the straw" for most of the past 15 years!
talk about anoying.
croisant |
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A lot of ice cream trucks here don't play music; Rather, they just ring a set of bells. This, too, can backfire, however. |
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A few months back, I was sitting on my balcony, reading a book, when I heard this dreadful noise somewhere, down and across the street. I couldn't see anything, but it sounded like a jackhammer, or some sort of (fire/break-in) alarm. I peeked as far off the balcony as I could, still couldn't see anything. |
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A few seconds later, the ice cream truck came rolling down the street. The noise was coming from the device on the truck that was supposed to be supplying the sound of joyful, ringing bells. Instead, it was providing this jagged, blaring din. |
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I couldn't figure it out -- it seemed to me that this sound would more likely scare off customers than it would attract them. |
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How does the ice-cream man himself avoid going insane from listening to that music all day, every day? |
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I live in a FL city where ice-cream trucks blare the same repetitive few notes from speakers and circle 'round and around my neighborhood's streets 12 months out of the year. It is a noise blight. I am not opposed to ice-cream trucks in principal, but I am opposed to electronic amplification. I advocate the use of acoustic bells, like they had several years ago. The sound is not so annoying to the human nervous system, and also, it would not be audible a quarter mile away. |
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please help me. i want to sabotage the ice cream man, and i think you will all be more than willing to assist. my plan - to download the songs he plays, then drive through neighborhoods blasting his song out of my buick. it will fool the crap out of hundreds of stupid little kids. if any of you can help me get the mp3 or wav of some ice cream man sounding songs, please email me at theguitarmanjp@yahoo.com. thanks a lot. also, check out my website - www.mentelyunstable.com
be good.
~Jp |
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You hearing people amuse me. |
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