"truck" news and stories

Flickr, Infrogmation.

The legendary New Orleans produce vendor at the center of a documentary short set to be screened this week at Sundance needs a new truck.

For nearly 40 years, Arthur Robinson -- better known to residents of the French Quarter, the Ninth Ward and Marigny as "Mr. Okra" -- has tooled around town in a hand-painted pick-up, emblazoned with slogans such as "All is fresh" and "Be nice or leave."

"His truck is not running anymore," confirms Mr. Okra's executive producer, André A. Jones. "We're trying to raise money to buy him a new one."

No matter where they grew up, it always seems that people have similar "ice cream man" stories. A lot of kids, my brother and I included, were convinced that their ice cream man has some sort of sinister alter ego, complete with an illegal job that no one could quite pinpoint. Ours, we decided, was a cocaine dealer, but yours might have spent his off time running numbers, dabbling in the mob, or laundering money, to name a few.

So despite this nose-numbing, toe-tingling, sniffle-inducing cold snap that most of us are experiencing right now, perhaps we can use our imaginations to conjure up some thoughts of warm days accented by the sounds of slightly off-key jingles wafting from the ice cream truck. You picturing it?

Good. Now, while you're in the mood, check out this gallery of unique ice cream trucks, and then leave us your ice cream man stories in the comments. (Speaking of which: did anyone's neighborhood have an ice cream woman?)

At the end of a long night out, most people are pretty hungry, especially if drinking and dancing have been involved. Fast food is one quick and easy option, while a number of restaurants stay open until the wee hours of the morning to accommodate night owl clients. A new ice cream company (so new that they don't have a website yet!) called Scoop wants the nightclub set to think of ice cream, and not fast food, when they're out late at night. Their ice cream truck was designed "to rekindle the childhood excitement of chasing down the ice cream man."

Unfortunately, we don't have any reports of what flavors this particular "ice cream man" is offering, although we suspect it won't be those ice cream-like popsicles with frozen gumballs stuck to them that seem to be so popular with kids when they find an ice cream truck. To check them out for yourself, you'll have to find the truck. The Scoop truck can currently be seen cruising through London's East End late in the evenings, but the company will probably really hit it off this summer, when they are scheduled to have a number of vans at English music festivals this year.

[via popgadget]

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It looks like the news is already out that vegetarians are smarter than the average omnivore because those with higher IQs are more likely to choose to follow the lifestyle. But will switching to a vegetarian diet improve your IQ, as well? This seems unlikely, but if all it takes is gradually increasing your vegetable intake (since some of the "vegetarians" in the study still ate meat), it could be worth a try. Not content to wait for gradual results, it looks like one person took matters into his own hands. He (or she) stole a refrigerated semi-truck filled with $50,000 worth of broccoli. The trucking company seems to think that the truck itself - and not the broccoli - might have been the target for the theft, but if this turns into a trend and trucks full of spinach, squash and other veggies turn up missing, maybe the IQ-theory won't seem so far fetched.

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How many times does a journalist get to use "Blame it on Tony the Tiger" as their lede? A Florida man, distracted by the bowl of Frosted Flakes he was eating, recently drove his 1999 Toyota Tacoma into the car of a local police officer. Luckily, no one was injured. The accident did cause a reported $5,000 worth of damage to both vehicles, according to the St. Pete Times. "They were in a bowl, but they were dry," a spokesman for the local sheriff's department told the Times, adding "I think the fortunate thing is nobody was really hurt so we can talk about the Frosted Flakes.''