SOUL ON ICE CREAM
SOUL ON ICE CREAM
By Arty Nelson
A few summers back, Fosselman's ice cream visited me like a bolt of lightning wrapped in a sweet cream loincloth. Maybe the timing was right, or maybe some other, more sinister and lecherous forces were at work … who knows? It's so hard to say what holds together the bundles of joy and contempt that rise up together and form one's subjective point of view. What's much easier to see is how something like Fosselman's Ice Cream Co. is alive and well in lovely Alhambra, long after so many of the other, lesser treat factories have gone down.
The thing to always remember is that summertime is as clear-cut a case of “fun food time” as the average human-slash-Shriner will ever get. Dining between the days of Memorial and Labor should be approached with a kind of devil-may-wear-wet-toga vengeance. And nothing anyone ever told you about the prospects of extending your life should be considered during this roughly three-month sojourn into the season that growing up forgot. It's a time when all decisions should be made from the groin while beaming a kind of beatific sleazy goodness. In short, don't let what California's become in the last few decades ruin the spirit that's run beneath the pavement for many, many years longer than that.
So there I am with my dogg Johnny A., and we're still reeling from our Pastrami Dip over at The Hat, when we pull up in front of the Fosselman's G-spot. Right away, so much of it feels hunky-dory – we've come head-to-head with “the class out on a field trip for cones” and, even better, “Grandma pulling the goodie trigger with little ones in tow” – and even though that Pastrami Dip's still very much alive and kicking in my system, I'm ready to throw down like there's no tomorrow (or even later today, for that matter).
To understand what makes Fosselman's Ice Cream so magnificent, one must put aside all of one's ego-/fear-based opinions and just head east until one is standing in exactly the same place. More than any kind of iced treat, like almost everything worth writing or talking about, encountering it makes one feel shoved tumbling down a rabbit hole into a kind of parallel snack time, where all that's been learned about the making of good things means very little when face-to-face with all that simply tastes good. Unlike the superbrands of our time – the Breyer's, the Ben & Jerry's, the Häagen-Dazs – it's the lightness, the sheer and unrepentant stealthiness of this south-of-32-Fahrenheit-fueled product that evokes powerful spirits to rally and conquer crime and even some of the smaller nations currently under siege.
Yes, Fosselman's has created something lasting and worth the descent into caloric debauchery. It's even worth propelling oneself out of this city's infamous Golden Triangle and right on over to Alhambra, a place where I'm almost positive life hasn't changed much since back when “hot damn” was a term used to convey excitement.
For me, it's hard to get any better than Mint Chip, but, that being said, I've had the Blueberry and, oh, boy, something kind of erotic was going on while those spoonfuls were going down. But flavor preference is a very personal thing, linked inextricably to how one got on with one's mother, so I feel kind of strange purporting to know what's right for you. What I can say, however, is that whatever taste sends hot waves directly to your private parts, Fosselman's has something pretty close to it, and you'll be sorry if you haven't brought a change of undergarments to battle the overflow of sensation.
Ice cream, it goes without saying, often conjures a variety of gleeful images of summertime, past and present, but that doesn't mean it's a foodstuff relegated to any crisply limned set of expectations. Take, for example, one of this country's finest thespians, Marlon Brando. Back during his days as a human still walking upright, it was often said that he enjoyed The Cream year-'round and in large buckets shared with no one, but that doesn't mean, of course, that you can't share yours. Because sharing, after all, is a rather concrete manifestation of caring, and isn't that, in the end, what so much of what lasts well beyond the initial rush all about? I think so. Go big, kids. Ciao.Published: 06/23/2005
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