quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

Oh I had forgotten about that article. When was that? Are they still in? sarahel you might be able to eat Cheet-Os after all.

i would like to be "in" white girls w/big asses HELLO

Yes, but you aren't a Style of the Times writer so who cares what you think.

judging by NYC subway fashion this season, I'd say asses are "out" and legs are "in"

What a relief! I was worried that in order to be stylish and cool, all women had to adopt the practices of that kooky breatharian lady ...

parents are assholes: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/dining/19soft.html?hpw

“There used to be this image that was wholesome and cool,” Mr. Semanko said. But these days, in Tacoma, there is a guy in an old mail van with no shirt on, smoking a cigarette, he said. “I heard one kid complain that the guy actually burped on him. That’s creepy to people.”

Ms. Reiley didn’t mind buying him a treat, occasionally. But the truck — called Here’s Frosty — parks outside her door on most sunny days around 4:30 p.m. and wakes her son from his nap. “Then he’s up, plastered against the window, yelling: ‘Music truck! Music truck!’ ” Ms. Reiley said. “Sometimes he grabs his little bank and says, ‘I have money.’ ”

That's cute as hell.

Ice cream is one of only two ways that I can get dairy into my kid and totally indulge him whenever the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, our ice cream guy speeds down the streets and is notoriously difficult to catch. We are mostly certain that he is a drug dealer.

“I fall into the camp of parents who are irate,” Ms. Sell said. She has equal disdain for Mister Softee and the ice cream pop vendor outside the park, but since they are licensed, there is not much she can do about them.

“I feel kind of bad about having developed this attitude,” she said. “I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this.”

Jesus christ lady

more evidence that someone at the NYT really wishes they wrote for the Onion.

for the record mister softee is one of the things i've missed most fiercely since leaving NYC

i can accept that some kids can put up quite a tantrum but isn't dealing with that behavior part of your responsibility as a parent?

god forbid people who sell frosty treats set up in locations full of their target customers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLNc5Kk3YKc

wait'll they see what's for lunch in the schools! oh, how they'll long for mister softee...

also i'm not sure where this romanticized image of ice cream vendors of yore comes from, the occupation has had its share of unsanitary conditions, shady creeps and druggy teens since always??

http://frostyfreds.com/images/frostyfred1.jpg

but people still take their kids to Taco Bell ...

I think the parents in that article only serve organic gluten free tacos prepared by the nanny/housekeeper.

i totally agree with these parents

yall think this is fun and games until u live in a family neighborhood and u hear the mfing jingle btw 2pm and 6pm every day

for the sake of argument, how is this different from parents being pissed about companies like mcdonald's advertising during saturday morning cartoons (something that i can understand, personally)?

just "tradition"?

yeah if i was a parent in a neighb frequented by these ding dongs i would probably get mad pretty quickly, unless i was trying to kill my children slowly w/ trans fat and shit

http://gawker.com/5341401/ice-cream-man+hating-food-nazi-sells-fried-candy-bars-in-her-brooklyn-restaurant

i dunno, i don't these parents as reprehensible as people highlighted in other NYT stories above; they seem pretty reasonable

don't find these parents, obv

i agree

I don't find them "reprehensible" ... I just find them delusional.

why?

ice cream men, fuckin vultures i tell you

xp - because they want to impose an unrealistic level of control over their environment and their children.

look at them, out in public spaces, on hot days, with their cold refreshing treats

won't anybody think of the children??

eh it doesn't seem 'unrealistic' to me but i don't really care enough to get in an argument about it.

I think it's unrealistic to try and prevent kids that want ice cream from getting ice cream.

ha ha

i can't make a sweeping generalization about all the concerned parents in this article because they seem to each have their own reasons, but taking the fight to city hall because your kid gets upset when you deny him ice creams is all sorts of nonsense

xpost yes that

I mean, it's kinda like those fundamentalist parents that complain about their kids being exposed to nudity and sex, and demand that society/culture do everything in its power to do so.

I don't know that it's unrealistic, actually -- to be honest I think the ice cream people know full well not only how they affect kids, but also that there's a level of triggering that kid-response where you're going to start to annoy and put out parents, and that there might come a point where parents start to hate and resent you and find you annoying and predatory. Some of the people in the article seem pretty rational about saying ice cream is fine, but there's a point where you're ringing the kids' bells all day long and it's not cool anymore.

I can completely understand that, and I don't think there's anything unrealistic about trying to exercise control of it -- the same way people exercise control over everything else in their environment, like noise levels or where you can take your dog or where hot-dog vendors can set up.

I think it's unrealistic to try and prevent kids that want ice cream from getting ice cream.

^^ this is a joke, right?

No, I'm serious. There are things that kids are gonna want to do, whether out of innate tastes and desires or the culture they exist in that aren't particularly harmful, that a realistic/mentally healthy parent should accept. I'm not arguing that they should allow their kids to have ice cream whenever they want, but it's better to teach your kid healthy ways to exist within society, than to try to keep them apart from it.

i don't think anyone in the article was saying they want their kids to never have ice cream?

i still think these parents' kids are gonna end up with fucked up eating habits/relationships to food.

Umm, yeah, what n/a said.

And if you're a realistic/sane person in charge of a child, there will come some point at which they want ice cream and you have to deny it to them. If omnipresent ice cream trucks mean you spend half your day doing this, it will probably start to get annoying.

And I'm assuming that ice cream trucks, like anything else that sells food in a city, have to get some kind of license or approval from the city. Which means that if they're hovering and ubiquitous all around the few NYC spaces you can take kids, and that starts negatively affecting people's quality of life, it's perfectly sensible to say hey, we need to license fewer of them or regulate their operations or something so it's possible to take a kid out of the house without the whole afternoon being an ice cream battle.

Oh wait, sorry, the main woman quoted was pissed off at the unlicensed ones and figured she couldn't do crap about the licensed ones -- I mean geez, she is basically asking for enforcement of existing rules so she less often has to deal with an I-want-treats tantrum, which c'mon, is not too hard to understand

And if you're a realistic/sane person in charge of a child, there will come some point at which they want ice cream and you have to deny it to them. If omnipresent ice cream trucks mean you spend half your day doing this, it will probably start to get annoying.

But isn't a significant aspect of parenting denying things to one's children that they want? I mean, it isn't like they're gonna want ice cream every minute of the day. There's a finite amount of ice cream a kid can eat.

yeah i can maybe understand drugdealin' / hygiene / air pollution concerns but banning ice cream trucks isn't going to stop kids from incidentally eating processed food, throwing tantrums, or annoying their parents.

I guess I'm arguing more on the principle than on the specifics ...

in the summer, the park near my house constantly has at least 2, sometimes 3 unlicensed ice cream trucks. that play christmas carols. i have yet to hear anything about this dire threat to our children from the neighborhood association or anyone else

give em the fucking cone

No one quoted in the article seems to object to ice cream on health grounds -- they object cause when kids see an ice cream truck they want ice cream, and if that happens every five minutes it is going to get kinda tiring.

Yeah, Sarah, part of parenting young kids is going to involve having to say "no, you can't have that" a lot of the time. But that can be kind of a hassle, and if vendors are constantly introducing that hassle into your day, you might kinda want to do basic civic stuff to reduce it, right? Like getting rid of unlicensed ones, or making rules about how close they can set up to playgrounds, or any number of little quality-of-life rules. It's not about denying kids ice cream, it's about creating a pleasant environment where there's not someone on every corner trying to sell your kid something you need to regulate.