A Candid Brooklyn Ice Cream Man Offers a Fascinating Glimpse Into His Daily Life

“I hear them bells when they’re off, I hear them in my sleep, I hear them when I lay down”

In the summer of 2015, Gothamist videographer Jessica Leibowitz spent a day with a Brooklyn ice cream vendor named Victor, who spoke about his daily life, the advantages and disadvantages of his job and how that year was going to be his last.

You bring a smile to these kids’ faces and it’s a great feeling. You got crying kids, I make them stop crying. This is a cutthroat job. The competition, you got trucks coming out in our routes and they try to, like, the guy around the corner now, he’s only here on the weekend. And he’s fighting me for that spot, when I work this route seven days a week. …Some don’t like me because of the bells. You’ve got guys coming up to me telling me to turn my music off or, ‘We don’t want you over here,’ my truck is an eyesore, I’m polluting the neighborhood with my generator. That’s the stuff I hear from them every day. …This is my last season (2015), it’s too much problems. I see myself in five years, if I’m not, if I’m not dead, which I’m not that lucky, probably thinking of going with Uber…