The following comes from a Jan. 22 story in the L.A. Times
New York’s Big Gay Ice Cream is opening shop in downtown Los Angeles this spring. Hello, Speculoos soft-serve, Salty Pimp chocolate-dipped ice cream cones, Newyorkina paletas and ginger-curry milkshakes.
After two successful Los Angeles pop-ups in the Big Gay Ice Cream truck, which drew throngs of fans, owners Douglas Quint and Bryan Petroff are opening their first ice cream parlor outside of New York. Located on 9th Street, it’s in the burgeoning neighborhood that now centers around the newly opened Ace Hotel on Broadway.
Quint and Petroff, who have two stores in Manhattan, have finalized the lease on what was formerly Anson’s Eatery, a sandwich shop that moved down the street. The 1,500-square-foot store — the biggest Big Gay Ice Cream yet — will be designed by L.A.-based David Hertz FAIA and the Studio of Environmental Architecture. (Expect some unicorns as part of the design.)
“We both had an affinity for coming out here,” Petroff says, “because of L.A.’s amazing weather, the produce, the food and a weirdness — like the weirdness in New York — that we appreciate.”
“Downtown has such a great feel and it isn’t as different from New York as going to Venice or even West Hollywood,” Quint says. “If you’re going to move to L.A. from New York, this is the baby-step way to do it.”
Petroff says they started looking for spaces in the area when the Ace had just started gutting the United Artists Building. “At the time we were just one shop and a truck,” Quint says. “We came here and it was a little hard to envision. We weren’t 100% faithful to the notion that this would work — not necessarily the neighborhood but even the shop.”
Meanwhile, their L.A. pop-ups proved highly successful, and in a once-fairly desolate part of downtown, the raved-about restaurant Alma opened and, more recently, Swedish fashion line Acne‘s U.S. flagship. Across the street from the Big Gay Ice Cream space is a new Aesop skincare boutique.
“I think people will find us,” Quint says.
On the Big Gay menu will be signature items such as the Bea Arthur cone (vanilla soft serve, dulce de leche and crushed Nilla wafers) and Mermaid sundae (vanilla soft serve with key lime curd, crushed graham crackers and whipped cream), as well as offerings exclusive to the L.A. shop featuring local ingredients. In New York, Ronnybrook Farm provides Big Gay Ice Cream’s dairy, and in L.A., Southern California’s Rockview Farms will be the provider….
Cal Catholic editor: Bea Arthur played Maude across the Archie Bunker character in All in the Family. When Arthur got her own show, Maude, she broke the TV barrier on abortion in “Maude’s Dilemma”, which according to Wikipedia was “a two-part episode airing near Thanksgiving of 1972 in which Maude’s character grapples with a late-life pregnancy, ultimately deciding to have an abortion.”
To read the entire L.A.Times story, click here.
The story neglects to mention that the UA theater (now occupied by the Ace Hotel) was for decades home to the studios of bizarro-evangelist and ubiquitous TV presence Dr. Gene Scott, and called Los Angeles University Cathedral.
I’m sure Tracy will be happy and lighthearted after reading this. Her definition of gay works well here.
I wonder . . . . do they have gay icecream menus or gay icecream agendas?
or gay ice cream double scoops !! ??
YFC, I’ve been away for about a week, but back today and noticed your comment. I still can’t figure out what an angry Maud has to do with the article. Anyway, I clicked onto the original article and must admit that the picture of the ice cream did leave me feeling rather “merry and lighthearted”! But I must also admit that the next picture of the two guys looked rather awkward and queer. :)
New York and Los Angeles, Sodom and Gomorrah!!
Bea Arthur was born as Bernice Frankel, a jewish girl from New York. She was always proud of her “tv abortion.”
And her New York Jewishness is relevant how?
I watched the episode on YouTube last night. I think it must have been made before the Roe v. Wade decision. There is no denying that Maude at 4 weeks pregnant is having a baby and that they just don’t want to have a baby. Watching her order a double after learning she is pregnant shows you how much pre-natal care has advanced since then. Then she wonders the next morning whether she should drink a cup of coffee!
I’m not certain, but I’m pretty fairly sure that the episode followed RvW. I was quite young when the decision came down, but remember quite clearly Maude and even the show that it was spun off from. [Off from which it was spun]
The episode was from 1972. Roe v. Wade was 1973. The sitcom took place in New York which legalized abortion in 1970.
I’m happy to stand corrected. Thank you.
Maude was a revolting sitcom…these types of episodic shows promote evil by playing the divide and conquer card…it always blows up in their face…Maude was trash than…and trash now…her socialist, secular agenda has been exposed for what it is…diabolism, pure and simple…Adriene Barbeau was fun to watch…