Pbenjay's Blog

Every street corner has its regulars, a place where the cool hang out and those that know what they’re looking for, know where to look for it.  New York is filled with those street corners ready and welcoming to all addicts.  In a City That Never Sleeps one never need go without.  It’s all here, yours for the taking and the right price. 

Drugs you say?  Are you kidding me?  This is a PG-rated blog or at least it was until yesterday!  No smack, coke, grass, ice, beans or  caviar here!  Hey that stuff is illegal…now that we live in a city where our former mayor squelched one potential bad habit after another, there’s only two  or three legal addictions left that flourish.  It was touch and go there while the battle to ban super size cups of soda raged on and that would have deprived all of the aspartame junkies.   You can’t smoke in restaurants or virtually any public place, and forget that trans-fat craving – they’re gone too!

No, I’m talking about, yes you guessed it, ICE CREAM.  This is one hell of a I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream kind of place.  It’s my paradise, my utopia, my Shangri-La, my Camelot, my Avalon, this is my City, where every color, kind, flavor, soft and hard ice cream, not to mention gelato peacefully co-exist and are all here for my indulgence!

Of course every grocery store, market and bodega carry ice cream, frozen bars and popsicles.  Mr. Softee trucks are parked just outside major subway stops.  And then there the standard franchised ice cream stores like Carvel, Ben & Jerry’s and local shops like Emack & Bolio’s,  and Sedutto, all a haven for me and the rest of the ice cream junkies in New York City.  If you’re  shopping at Eli”s you can sample some of his creamy gelatos or while eating a hamburger at  Danny Meyer’s  Shake Shack, you can grab one of his daily homemade flavors of frozen custard.

But the worst places or the best places depending on what Step you’re on in your program, are the recent blossoming of  these help yourself , all you can eat soft yogurt store fronts!  We got Yogurt Land, 16 Handles and Off The Wall,  – they’re the equivalent of ancient opium parlors.  Just imagine walking into one of these multi-flavor palaces of sensory pleasure.  What would you do?  

I know what I do!  You take one of their large cups and you walk around in a daze, gazing at the walls with their colorful graphic cards describing the flavors and the gleaming shiny chrome handles and spigots.  I used to think Baskin & Robbins was heaven on earth with their 55 flavors to choose from but I was wrong because for all those flavors the most you could get on a cone  or a cup is two, three at the most.

But not in one of these delicious dispensers, oh no…you can pull down those handles and add coconut frozen yogurt and then add pistachio and then Dutch chocolate and then mango and then…well you get the picture, don’t you?  Pretty soon, those creamy cold coils of flavored yogurt are piled up one upon another.  On your way to the check out counter where they weigh your cup (you pay by the ounce), you pass a vast array of various toppings like M & M’s, gummy bears, cocoanut, chocolate syrup and much more.  I just pass right by these distractions because why would I ever want to mask the flavors of my frozen yogurt picks?

Summer in the City is my Nirvana!  If you’re an ice cream junkie, this place is for you!  Welcome to my world.

Menchi’s Frozen Yogurt