Ice Cream Man

I grew up trolling for vinyl at classic bay area stores like Rasputin Music, the Vinyl Solution, Amoeba and Mod Lang, and east coast places like Newbury Comix , In Your Ear and Planet Records once I was off to college. Now that I have young kids, limited time, and $4-a-gallon gas, I just don’t make it to all my favorite record stores as often as I used to. So when I heard that April 19th hundreds of independently owned music stores across the country would be celebrating Record Store Day I knew where I had to be. I scoped out the recordstoreday.com website and was excited that the new Rasputin’s store in Mountain View was participating. Sweet ! This awesome new store opened about six months ago is less than a mile from home. It also turns out this Rasputin’s location is hosting the biggest of the big record store day events – a Metallica in store signing Truth be told, I’m not a big metal fan, so I tried to time my visit to late in the day to try and avoid the big crowds. My goal was simple; stop by for a bit of browsing and acquire the Death Cab for Cutie record store day limited edition single. So with that simple task in mind I headed to Rasputin’s with my five year old son Gus in tow.

What a crowd! All around Rasputin’s there was a vast sea of black-clothed uber-fans, all patiently waiting their turn to meet Metallica. These were true blue fans. A few had been queued up for days. All had been there since early morning, when wristbands were handed out to the first 400 fans in line. A good quarter of the fans had guitars in tow, the rest clutched cool pieces of Metallica memorabilia, all waiting to be signed. The signing was happening in the t-shirt annex of the store, and the retail portion was peaceful and quiet. As I browsed, it was great fun to watch the small groups of excited fans being escorted to their final destination – meeting Metallica!

The DCFC single was acquired, as were many other cool vinyl items.”Mission accomplished” I thought as we left the store. And then – BAM – we were with the huge crowd again. They had been waiting forever. My first thought was, “Man, I wish Matt could have been here to sling cream – this is his kind of happening.” I paused a minute and contemplated. I’d recently sold my first commercial photo through ice cream man, and actually had the commission check in my purse. Funds – check. I always keep a large stash of ice cream man stickers in my car for all the local concerts I shoot. Stickers – check. There was a Trader Joe’s with some yummy cream just a few blocks away. Cream – check. A plan was hatched.

Gus and I headed over to Trader Joe’s and cleaned them out of chocolate covered ice cream bars, and we made a sizable dent in their supply of tofu ice cream sandwiches and fruit popsicles, too. I wasn’t so sure about how the tofu cuties would go over with the crowd, but Gus was insistent, and we were partners in this impromptu effort. We’d agreed I’d carry the goods and explain the Ice Cream Man premise and let folks know what kinds of ice cream we had. Gus would hand over the actual ice cream and proclaim, “Enjoy!”

We headed back to Rasputin’s and the slinging began. I’ve photographed the slinging before, but have never had the pleasure of slinging myself. We started at the back of the line, and the fun began. We slowly worked our way to the front of the line, and met a lot of great people along the way. Gus has right – the tofu cuties were a big hit. I guess I should have known a 5 year old knows what’s what in the world of ice cream. We still had lots of fruit bars left, so we headed inside to see if the staff was up for cream. Unfortunately they couldn’t eat while on duty, but luckily they had a freezer. I handed over the last of our strawberry popsicle stash to a friendly manager that had met Matt when he and Bessie had been slinging cream at NoisePop the month before. He happily took enough to provide the entire staff with cream when their shifts ended.

Gus and I headed back home with big smiles. Happy Record Store Day 2008!