mmmm burgers

everyone enjoys a good burger ... even vegetarians otherwise why would they go to so much effort to make the soy product taste like the real thing?

we have to agree -- burgers at Da|Ba are pretty f--ing awesome. it's all about the meat, baby.

and ice cream dreams do come true at LICK.

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I wish I could take credit for this but helas, I cannot. Many thanks to Reza for his wicked sense of humor.

the art is back!

Max and Miles are back in the game! Pacman!!!

The first weekend was a raging success. Everyone wanted to be in a good mood and the weather was on our side. Murphy's Law stipulates that the next few weeks will bring us totally crappy weather (it's the ice cream equivalent of Groundhog Day). If so, don't be surprised if we close up shop for the day. You probably wouldn't even notice because who goes out for ice cream in crappy weather?!?

Thanks to everyone who brought us a great weekend!!!

DAY ONE -- 2009

I wish I had a better picture for today but there was no time! So instead here are some peeps that are almost as pink as the LICK shop.

Today was hot, it was busy, and everyone (and I mean everyone) was in a good mood. From the way I saw it, everyone was so excited to put on their summer clothes and walk about town as proof that winter is done and gone.

We had a few hiccups that all resolved themselves in the first hour (like where are the napkins?!? or sugar cones -- oops!). But no real mishaps. Except a kid or two who licked the scoop of ice cream right off their cone and onto the floor. We pointed and laughed at them, and then laughed some more (just kidding -- we really just gave 'em a new one).

Coming very, very soon.....

We hadn't planned on opening for another three weeks .... but with the predicted heat wave how could we not open?

Expect much of what you saw last year -- ice cream, milkshakes, smoothies, sundaes, and ice cream sandwiches. For the hot stuff, we have all the espresso drinks you could hope for. There will be a few new and exciting things (like a death by caramel sundae -- appropriately called "caramel heaven", laden with gingersnaps and whipped cream).

We're also putting out more benches and more chalk ..... come for a plop and get comfortable (sorry, no baby sitting drop-off services).

See you tomorrow -- it all begins Saturday the 25th of April !!!!

thank you hudson!

it was a great summer - so much fun - thank you so much for making it happen with us.

time for hiatus and hibernation .... see you in early may, 2009!!!

someone you know...

SOMEONE YOU KNOW brought in a photo from their childhood. a photo so reminiscent of the 70's that we had to recreate it to the best of our ability with chalk.

think wild hair and a white tank top!

maybe the colors aren't true but in a box of chalk you only get a few shades to work with. what did you want, green or pink hair? c'mon, we get the chalk from the dollar store -- not like they're going to have any of the fancy brown colors. if someone wants to swing by the Spotty Dog and get real chalk, we'd be more than happy to use all 32 hues! but i must confess, it won't make us better artists. we only know how to scoop ice cream and make people happy.

happy birthday ollie!!!

we had another birthday here at the LICK. one of those birthday parties where everyone gets an ice cream but there was no candle this time. i think ollie wouldn't have known to blow it out!

more chalk

you would not believe how much chalk art we get every day.

we want to host a sidewalk chalk art competition next summer with different prize categories. would you participate??

Lily and Bea!!!

Lily and Bea came in for some mango sorbet the other day. The paparazzi caught up with them right in front of the beautiful flowers of Lili and Loo.

Imagine that -- a Lily in front of Lili with lilies in the background. Folks, you can make this stuff up!

collaboration

what we have here are three different artists. the first person was just sketching LICK (can you blame them?!?). the second person added ME just to be funny because if you think about it, there are a lot of words that can be tagged onto LICK to form an imperative. but it's the third person here who gets the honorable mention -- the one who wrote PLEASE because you know it was some type of june cleaver who just had to correct the impolite usage of the english language!

rainbow sprinkles!!!

this here is pure happiness -- the wind in her hair, the promise of rainbow sprinkles, and the time before filing tax returns and watching her cholesterol. kacie ann is one happy kid.

blah

as you can see, we had no bright ideas today.

sorry!

Lauren

here's another good picture taken by barry. this time it's lauren trying to keep the melting plum sorbet off her fingers. Yoohoo - those kinds of messes are exactly why the shop is called LICK, lauren (and most certainly not LICK LAUREN, although that would be the history of hudson in a nutshell or in this case, a scoop!).

by the way, you should read lauren's bio.

so, back to the dripping plum sorbet, who needs napkins? just curl your tongue around the drippy parts and lick them up! yum yum!!

Giuseppa

this darling little girl is going through a hat phase despite the summer heat. you know what? we think she's adorable!

at first glance it looks like a Benneton add, non?

Kacie Ann

Hello hello, here we have Kacie Ann. Which of the following statements is correct?

(a) to the joy and appall of parents Hudson-wide, LICK has opened a daycare facility

(b) the first enrollee in the LICK Exective Training Program (LICKETP) studies the wrist-swirl vs. arm-pulling techniques of scooping ice cream

(c) shift supervisor keeps a watchful eye on portion control and inventory management

(d) gee, if I sit here really quietly with this cheese-eating grin on my face, maybe they'll realize how adorable I am and give me FREE ICE CREAM FOR LIFE!!!!!

nighttime action

Here's a spontaneous shot of what LICK is like after dinner on a warm summer night -- people gathering together while dogs hope for a lucky drip to fall. Come January and February, we'll look back on these nights as the most special part of summer.

SmoothieMan!!!

Terrence is probably the happiest kid we've ever met. So excited, so gung-ho. SUPER creative imagination.

We showed him how to play tic-tac-toe on the sidewalk. At first he just thought they were random X's and O's but he quickly caught on.

Terrence likes the smoothies to the point where he got the nickname SmoothieMan!!!

james brown?

question time -- is this kid:
(a) singing
(b) praying
(c) going down for more

it could be any one of those!

that cone looks like a microphone to me. i can hear james brown right this very second...

thanks barry for a great picture. folks -- this is what it looks like when a REAL photographer uses his camera. not like the rest of us who rely on our telephones to take a fuzzy picture.

we're on a food writer's blog!!

A guy was sitting at the cafe table enjoying his ice cream when i noticed he was taking notes. i joked with him about being an undercover food critic when he confessed he was Mike Dunne, the traveling food editor for the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

he loved LICK!!

click on the article below to get a larger version for reading...

man's best friend

here are victor and chip. although sometimes i call him rocky. rocky the dog, not victor.

today is rocky's lucky day. in case you couldn't guess, DOGS LOVE ICE CREAM.

we have dog biscuits that we give out but rocky knows better to wait until the cup is almost finished. he's even happy licking just the spoon but tonight he got a real treat!

Peek-a-boo

These kids have the most advanced palettes (not to mention the most colorful faces) in Hudson. Skip the vanilla with sprinkles -- they want minced ginger, coffee, and butter pecan. Dad's a trained chef so they know good food. (and don't mess with Texas!)


When we asked Dodge to give us a good long lick for the camera, she showed us how she could do it without an ice cream. Go Dodge!

Not only does she get the best lick award for a Thursday night, the cerise rain boots were not overlooked by the LICK fashion judges. Cute Cute Cute!

Who would have thunk

Who would have thunk. The flavor to fly out of here the fastest of all time is ...... Cookie Dough. Yes, the one that's vanilla-based with nuggets of cookie batter. Old people, youngins, everyone alike wanted cookie dough today. It only took 5 hours to hit the bottom of the tub. Trust you me, that's a lot of ice cream!

But you know .... I have to admit .... a scoop of cookie dough and a scoop of milk chocolate is like a birthday party in your mouth. With some hot fudge on top .... yes!

Abel - you rock!

steve and abel came for ice cream tonight. half way through, holding his cone in one hand, abel reached for some chalk and sketched this out free-hand on the sidewalk in about 4 seconds.


i'm really happy for people who are artistic and talented. but the happiness quickly turns to envy .... and then sometimes turns to jealousy (grrrr!). so we got out the hose and washed it away. see - nothing to be jealous about! just kidding. sort of.

Fionnula

The world's cutest kid!

so here we have a little girl who is seriously contemplating how to keep eating that cone still in her hands. today was a hot day so the ice cream melted quickly (but notice the nearly clean fingers!) so she's tracking every last drop...



unlike her brother who doesn't like to be interrupted. the parents have wisely given him a napkin and maybe that's why he's not smiling. it's as if the napkin has removed the carte blanche to make as much of a mess as childly possible.

the bottom tastes better

ok - this adorable kid didn't answer any of our questions. just sat there happily eating his cone. chocolate again - did you notice?

THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN he realized that the bottom of the cone was still crunchy so he starting working on that. we just sat there and chuckled. he paid us no attention and kept on going. and going. and going. to the point that this picture doesn't do justice to the chocolate-face he ended up with.

this is proof that we need a baby washing station. napkins and water just don't do the trick. a hose with a spray nozzle is more like it!

follow the yellow chalk arrow

look what we found on the sidewalk one morning. just in case you had NO IDEA that there was an ice cream shop in town, you can now follow your happy toes to get a cone. except we don't have blue ice cream. ew gross. how many chemicals do you need to make it blue?!?

more chocolate!!!

so what do you notice first about this kid? it's the name on his shirt -- right? you're probably sitting there wondering if it's SPUD's or SPOD's and you wish the logo people wouldn't keep getting in the way......

but then......

hey wait.......

is that chocolate all over that kid?

now i know where all the napkins go.

at least he's smart enough to keep his fingers in thin air. not like the other kids who've figured out that they can put their chocolate hand prints ALL OVER hudson!

lucky boy!

what is it with kids and chocolate? have you noticed that's the only flavor they make a mess with? all i can say is that this is one lucky-licky boy!

LICK has its first birthday party!

These kids ran in ....

cone city

every couple of days we dip cones. can't do too many at once or they end up going stale with the summer humidity. it's a huge production because you need huge surface area to spread out. and sprinkles end up everywhere. and then you have to do it all over again with coconut, then peanuts, then heath bar. it's worth it, especually the scent coming up from the bubbling cauldron of melted chocolate!

Hey world -- meet Tej

Tej is the first LICK poster child. He got a super size chocolate ice cream and dove into it nose first. It was a hot day so everything started to get ooey and gooey as you can see.

P.S., love the Clash.

Major thank you to Matt and Amie

Major thank you to Matt and Amie. They get the award for most miles driven for an ice cream.

Day 3 update -- there wasn't a most popular flavor today. It was pretty much even across the board.

Although the Boysenberry sorbet got a lot of attention. So there.

Day 2 digest

Day 2: Nobody wanted Minced Ginger. Was that because they had it yesterday? No problemo. We've got 16 flavors so that gives 'em 15 more to choose from.

Today's magic flavor was Pistachio. You should have seen people's eyes as they zeroed in on the label that says "salted" and "colossal". They got real big.

We had the same conversation all day long.....

No ma'am, it's the nuts that are salty, not the ice cream.

Yes sir, they're whole pistachios, not just crumbly nuggets.

No you idiot, I don't know why it was ever green. (the nut industry must be .... kinda nuts).

Here's a picture of Jack demonstrating proper eating technique.
Step 1 - open mouth
Step 2 - insert spoon
Step 3 - more more more!

Day 1 digest

Wow! Hudson, you ROCK!!

Day 1 the most popular flavor was Minced Ginger. That flew out of here twice as fast as any other flavor. Who knew?

We heard so many good things that we had to start counting:

• 1 out of 3 people said, "This is exactly what town needed"
  
  
• 1 out of 5 people congratulated us on staying open until 10pm, 7 days/week (and a few of them also called us crazy. we're taking that as a ..... compliment)
  
  
• 1 out of 10 people asked, "Where's cookie dough?"
  
  
• 1 out of 20 people said, "That's not pistachio - it's not green"

So maybe we are crazy but it was worth it. Thanks Hudson!

Here's the menu. Click on it to get a readable copy...

HUDSON LICKS!!!!!

Too tired to think, let alone stand up. Exhausted. But day 1 was a total success. I wish day 2 wasn't like .... tomorrow.

Crazy

I am crazy - we are crazy. What are we doing?!? We're in no shape to open an ice cream shop, let alone open one TOMORROW.

This was a mistake, complete mistake. There must be a way to still get out of it. We can probably sell the dipping cabinet on craig's list. Right? Maybe we can give it to crazy aunt Marge for Christmas. And each of the kids can get a CASE of cones in their stocking (because every kid needs 250 wafer cones, right?). Oh boy....

At least we have this cool logo.