A Renegade Muscles In on Mister Softee’s Turf

Summer in New York City means ice cream trucks: bell-jingling fleets of pleasure craft festooned with pictures of perfectly swirled desserts and beaming children, delivering frozen providence into grateful sweaty hands.

But behind those cheery facades simmer turf wars — long-running, occasionally bloody feuds between ice cream vendors for control of the city’s prime selling spots.

And in a recent battle for a lucrative zone of tourist attractions and sunny pedestrian plazas, a place filled with people willing to pay $4 for a plain vanilla cone, no sprinkles, the king of ice cream land has lost to an upstart.

Mister Softee says he has been muscled out of Midtown.

“If one of my drivers goes to Midtown, they’ll bring their trucks in and surround them — a bunch of guys,” said Peter Bouziotis, who runs the Softee depot in the Bronx, which covers Manhattan. “They’ll start banging on the windows.”

Boxing in a Softee truck so the driver cannot do business. Getting up in his face. Grabbing his collar and delivering some unsolicited advice.

“Happens all the time,” [a] New York Ice Cream man said.