As Buffalo Swelters: Ice Cream Cycle to the Rescue!

As the thermometer at the upper right of the BRO home page moves within range of triple digits -- in the 90s at the time of publishing -- I feel like I'm in that Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun."  How to cope?  Ice Cream!!  James Karagiannis, aka The Ice Cream Dude, came to the rescue of some hot, hard-working folks on Niagara Street today.  Pulling into a parking lot not far from Santasiero's, James found a ready group of customers from Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, Better Wire, and Smith McDonald - all tenants of several buildings in that area owned by Bill Breeser.  After he reset everyone's internal thermostats to cool, someone asked James to pop across the street to serve some production workers.  Afterward, James said, his plan was to head out to the Outer Harbor along Rt. 5, to ply his wares in the cool Lake Erie breezes.



James came equipped with his latest weapon in his mission of helping Buffalo keep its inner cool: a trailer.  Something he acquired this week, now James can trailer his Ice Cream Cycles to locations where he thinks he'll find business, and ride around from there.  Otherwise, he would have been pedaling from Niagara/Ferry all the way to the outer harbor -- likely finding few customers along the way, and arriving exhausted.  "There was a great deal of dead time," James deadpanned about some of his longer treks from work area to work area.



And what areas are James and his crew working this summer?  He told me they've spent a lot of time cruising the west side between Niagara and Grant - very densely settled areas where people spend a lot of time outdoors.  He also made a recent foray into University Heights -- outside his normal stomping grounds -- and apparently angered "the competition."  "An ice cream truck spotted me and started following me around, block after block.  Then I realized that he was playing the music, the customers would come out, and see me!  I didn't mind," James told me, as if nothing fazes him.

That's a good trait -- as you know from previous Buffalo Rising coverage, it seems like there is never a dull day in Ice Cream Cycle world.  James' business adds greatly to the liveliness and vitality of Buffalo's streets, and strikes me as a modern-day version of the pushcarts that within living memory plied Buffalo's streets (click here and go to the last page).  Buffalo is fortunate to have entrepreneurs like James -- don't let him pass by without getting an ice cream bar!