Guy Fieri Tour Dates<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’ve seen his act and he’s got tons more star power than most musicians, he knows how to work a crowd.)<\/p>\n
So that’s become the default channel on Felice’s television, the Food Network.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I walked into the bedroom after listening to Tom Petty on Blu-Ray, she was watching a show about legends.\u00c2\u00a0 On screen was Tom Carvel.<\/p>\n
TOM CARVEL!<\/p>\n
It was really an east coast thing, Felice wasn’t familiar.\u00c2\u00a0 But Carvel ice cream was the Ben & Jerry’s of its day.\u00c2\u00a0 A special treat that made you feel fully alive with every lick, a cult we were proud to be a member of.<\/p>\n
There was one outlet downtown.\u00c2\u00a0 And another on the Post Road in Westport.\u00c2\u00a0 Around the corner from our house, on Black Rock Turnpike, was Dairy Queen. We went there after each Little League victory, but it was akin to Wonder Bread.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you could lacquer your cone with a hard plastic shell, but the ice cream?<\/p>\n
Whereas on the way home from the beach, or after dinner on a hot summer evening, my dad would pile us into the station wagon and we’d drive down to Carvel.\u00c2\u00a0 The way he testified, you’d think he owned the place.\u00c2\u00a0 At Carvel, you weren’t limited to vanilla.\u00c2\u00a0 No, you could have chocolate with a hard chocolate shell!\u00c2\u00a0 Or even a strawberry shell!\u00c2\u00a0 And occasionally strawberry ice cream!\u00c2\u00a0 And unlike Dairy Queen, the ice cream didn’t only feel good on your tongue, it titillated your taste buds, it was rich and creamy.<\/p>\n
Butter fat.\u00c2\u00a0 That was the secret according to a Carvel man in this documentary.<\/p>\n
Tom Carvel knew Ray Kroc.\u00c2\u00a0 He bought mixers from him before Ray blew up McDonald’s.\u00c2\u00a0 And Ray wanted Tom to throw in with him, but Tom didn’t think Kroc’s idea was so hot, and thought it better to do one thing best.<\/p>\n
Carvel was like a religion.\u00c2\u00a0 My dad would buy Flying Saucers.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t know they were hand-made in each store until watching this documentary.\u00c2\u00a0 Ditto on the ice cream cakes.\u00c2\u00a0 Come on, getting a Carvel ice cream cake for your birthday?\u00c2\u00a0 That was living!<\/p>\n
But what truly fascinated me was Tom’s franchising strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 He only made deals with poor people.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they would work hard, it was a family business. In an era where the rich own everything at a distance, where the poor are employees who can’t rise above, this was a revelation.\u00c2\u00a0 Just give us a chance, we’ll show you, we’ll put our hearts and minds into it, and all of our time!<\/p>\n
We may not have the skills to work on Wall Street, but it turns out all those quants didn’t either.\u00c2\u00a0 And Wall Street used to build America, now it just builds the private edifices of fat cats.<\/p>\n
Kind of like the music business.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, there were pioneers, progenitors.\u00c2\u00a0 Many with colorful pasts, but Ahmet and Morris Levy and Mo Ostin built this business.\u00c2\u00a0 Where are their stories?<\/p>\n
Oh yeah, VH1 is for criminals, social outcasts who cavort on screen for the mentally challenged.\u00c2\u00a0 As for MTV, the reality pioneer?\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no reality on that channel, "The Hills" is scripted, didn’t you know that?<\/p>\n
I’m not saying the history of rock and roll is going to deliver boffo ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, wasn’t VH1 built on "Behind The Music"?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, audiences like train wrecks, but even more interesting are true stories, Discovery has a gold mine based on reality.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Food Network too.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if it’s even television, maybe it’s a Website.<\/p>\n
But the history of the music business needs to be told.\u00c2\u00a0 Not with self-congratulatory concerts at Madison Square Garden, celebrating the inane Hall Of Fame, but documentaries on Bill Aucoin, who truly built KISS.\u00c2\u00a0 And Brian Epstein.\u00c2\u00a0 And even Irving Azoff and Cliff Burnstein.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, people can relate to these individuals even more than the stars.\u00c2\u00a0 You can see yourself in the role, you love to see the rise and sometimes fall.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s fascinating.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I hear there’s a new Carvel on Santa Monica Boulevard…<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom Carvel would only give franchises to poor people. Ever since I went to Jim Lewi’s food festival at Shoreline, I’ve been hooked by the Food Network.\u00c2\u00a0 It started watching Triple D on on demand, then Felice got hooked on the competition shows and now it’s a TV mainstay. Triple D?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s "Diners, Drive-ins and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-carvel","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}