Nothing marks your shift into adulthood quite like your reaction to the sound of an ice cream truck.
To a child, it means ice cream. To an adult, it means a screeching, summer-long jingle from hell. So far this year, New Yorkers have made 1,804 ice cream truck-related complaints to the city's non-emergency complaint system, 311. According to DNAinfo, that's about 200 more complaints than 2013.
Residents feel that the Department of Environmental Protection is inadequately policing the trucks' violations of the city's noise laws, which prohibit vehicles from playing music while parked.
While some of these complaints come from the storied use of ice cream trucks as a means to easily sell drugs in NYC, others seem to find issue mostly with the trucks' cheerful jingles.
It's a serious problem.
I hate the ice cream truck. And it's music.— Courtney Rolf (@CourtneyRolf) July 28, 2014
Really.
i really, really, really, really really, really, really really, really hate the ice cream truck in brooklyn— tonje thilesen (@tonjethilesen) June 1, 2014
DNAinfo revealed some residents' written complaints to 311, which come off just a bit too Jack-Torrance-in-the-Shining-ish for our comfort.
The ongoing war against ice cream is expected to continue in the summer of 2015.