Redlining Food Businesses
Shoveling shaved ice for various uses, Courtesy of the New York Public Library
President Ronald Reagan gets the credit for naming July national ice cream month! We North Americans consume more ice cream than anybody else on the globe. I did a couple of post featuring Carvel ice cream and my childhood memories growing up in Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County. However, Mario, a Honduran American, explained: Carvel Ice Cream, that was a suburban thing man! Growing up in the South Bronx [in the 1970s] we never had luxuries like Carvel or Mc Donald’s. Those companies never considered opening franchises in the Bronx, they were too scared. When we thought of Carvel growing up, we thought of about the suburbs, you know Long Island, Westchester, and places like that.” He went on to say, “We had piraguas,” Latin American snow cones that came in flavors like coconut, lemon, strawberry, passion fruit, mango, and pineapple. They made them literally from scratch on the spot as they shaved ice from a large block and then flavored it to your personal taste. Cubans called them granizados and Dominicans frio frio. So what's the takeway? Food is an indicator of gastro politics in which Carvel like other corporations sold franchises in wealthy vanilla suburbs. When you see a Carvel or piragua vendor you can pretty much tell the class and ethnicity of an area.
