Dairy Inn

Right across the street from where Kerouac liked to drink stands one of my all-time favorite ice cream stands - Dairy Inn. Much has been made of Kerouac's frequenting of the Flamingo Bar, but since we also know that Jack also was an aficionado of cones, I'm absolutely certain he stumbled over here once in a while to get a banana split.

They have so much goodness on the menu - including beignets, Philly Cheesesteaks, and scrambled eggs - that my mind just shuts down trying to absorb it all. Therefore, I tend to just grab a butterscotch-dipped soft-serve cone and be on my merry way.... across the street.

Kohr Family Frozen Custard

One of the best treasures of John's Pass is this amazingly untouched-by-time ice cream joint. It's called Kohr Family Frozen Custard and offers "swirly cones" with a heaping portion of double-flavored goodness. Every time I'm in John's Pass I can't resist grabbing some of their fine wares.

Be warned of several things - one, the seagulls around here will swoop down and try to eat your cone if you take it near the boardwalk, so be vigilant.

Two, it's not really "frozen custard" in my estimation, it's more like a highly air-puffed soft-serve. I don't care. I still think it's great.

Thirdly, Kohr's is expensive. I say it's worth it and so am I and by golly, so are you.

The Daily Scoop

Even though the peninsula that contains Clearwater and St. Petersburg is laid out like a grid, I still get lost on it. A lot. Something about all that blurry Pinellas Park-Largo-Lealman area in the middle disorients me. The other day I was on a run to one of my new favorite tobacconists, St. Pete Cigar, took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up in Kenneth City.

I spied a closed-down ice cream shack called The Daily Scoop, and pulled over to inspect its carcass. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that it had an enormous replica of the top of an ice cream cone sticking out from its roof. It looked familiar, I thought to myself.

Could it be?

It was. I peered in through the windows and saw that some clever human took a pre-existing Twistee Treat cone-shaped stand and built a restaurant around it while leaving the cone-building completely intact inside. If you look close (it was hard to take pics through the glass because of the sun's glare and reflection) you can see they even left the words "Twistee Treat" on the interior cone's facade.

My first thought was elation at the idea that I could lease this place and actually run my very own Twistee Treat stand. However, Kenneth City is not exactly on my top 10 list of places to open a business. (Honestly, it isn't even in the top 100) and my entrepreneurial dance card is pretty well full these days anyway. But the cone is there, silently waiting. Will it be you who resurrects it?

Twistee Treat Orlando

Another sighting in Orlando of Twistee Treat, the great almost-extinct chain of ice creameries with brilliant mimetic architecture. It's on Colonial Drive, leaving Orlando and heading for the Space Coast. This one, interestingly, has a drive-thru window and a bit of chocolate coloring splashed onto its roof.

You may recall, another specimen can be found on St. Pete's Beach, while another has been converted into a cupcake hut in Jacksonville.

Tropiccool

Another grand entry in the neverending investigation of Florida ice cream: Tropiccool in St. Pete. Like L-Loco and Hyppo, they offer gourmet popsicles in an assortment of wacky flavors. (Seen here is "Coffee Cognac".)

I also have tried their coconut gelato, which is killer diller. They have fancy iced coffees too, but they don't open early enough for me. I likes my coffee before dawn, which makes Starbucks the only option for a worm-acquiring early-bird like me. Well, that and my Nespresso machine.

Their official Tropiccoolmobile, which cruises around dispensing good things to little eaters all around the area, is a modified Jeep that has, for reasons opaque to me, extra "E"s in it.

Paciugo Gelato

I was down by the shore in St. Petersburg the other week, getting some fine tea at Hooker Tea Company, when I decided to scope out the gelato joint next door, just for kicks. It was breakfast and I wasn't really in the market for ice cream that early but when I saw that the place - Paciugo, it's called - had violet gelato, I scrambled for the wallet.

Violet gelato. Do you hear me? Violet gelato. If you fetishize, as I do, those old 1940s violet candies that somehow still exist to this day (you may have seen them referenced on Mad Men) then you have to get down here and try this. They have other flavors. I can't think of any right now. They're fine, I'm sure. There's a list of them here, in fact. But dude. Violet gelato.

Freezy

I first saw him in 2008, at The Shake Pit in Bradenton, and immediately portions of my brain screamed at other portions of my brain. This sign depicting an anthropomorphic ice cream cone named "FREEZY" caught my eye, like literally, and wouldn't let go of it, gripping it in a beam of pure silver radioactive-hot intention.

Freezy's gaze followed me everywhere I walked. Even when I walked out of range of his direct line of sight, I became aware that Freezy emanated a 3-D holographic spherical field of vision that swept up everything within it towards it. I looked around at my fellow ice cream enthusiasts, who obliviously and robotically extended their tongues and rubbed them in a vertical trajectory against their cones like cattle at a salt lick. Don't you see it too? Somebody, tell me you see it too! It wasn't the first time I've felt like the guy with the special sunglasses in They Live and it won't be the last, mark me.

But what did Freezy WANT? Perhaps nothing more than a tithe to his chapel of soft-serve. For, once I stepped up to the counter and made the purchase of a large Coke Milkshake (which the Shake Pit creates by squirting actual Coca-Cola concentrated syrup direct from their fountain-soda tanks - shades of Bart Simpson's consciousness-altering Super Squishy made entirely out of syrup) the man-faced cone quietly nodded his assent and acceptance, in almost Buddhist fashion, and gently released his psychic tentacles.

I've been there a zillion times since. You'd think he'd remember me. But no, we have to go through the same damn rigamarole every time. I say, "Wassup, Freezy? My man!" and he just starts in with the hypno-ray vibes and giving me that Bela Lugosi look with his unfathomable little crescent moon eyeballs all over again. Sigh.

Short and Sweet

Clever humans! Someone in Jacksonville decided to convert this mimetic Twistee Treat ice cream building (just like the one in St. Pete's Beach!) into a cupcake shop and take advantage of the fact that an ice cream cone does kinda resemble a cupcake if you put a candle on top and sufficiently flog your suspension of disbelief.

Then again, not everyone's adept at that. As this newspaper article notes:

Though customers still walk up and ask for a large vanilla cone, there is no soft-serve ice cream inside. Just cupcakes and cookies.

More importantly, the article gives us valuable new research insight into the background of our Twistee Treat fascination:

It looks like something from the 1950s, when buildings-as-kitschy-art lined American byways. There were giant oranges, hot dogs, milk bottles and motel rooms that looked like teepees.

But the Twistee Treat cones actually only date to the early 1980s. It was a Florida company, founded in Cape Coral. There were 23 Twistee Treats in the state when the company filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

A new company was formed a few years later and it’s believed that about 90 of the buildings were built over the years and about half have torn down.

Joe's Eats and Sweets

When in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, my favorite place for the good ice cream is Joe's Eats and Sweets, 219 Gulf Drive South, with enticing and exotic flavors like Orange Pineapple, Sweet Cream, Cotton Candy & Nerds (yes, the Nerds candy!), Almond Turtle Fudge, Key Lime Cheesecake, Brownie Batter, Dulce de Leche, and White Chocolate Peppermint Bark.

Joe's is one of the very few businesses up on stilts, which is odd because things get flooded around here rather often. Climbing their steps can be a bit of a drag, but their vantage point does provide a lovely view once you get up there.

Hyppo

In the Colonial Quarter of St. Augustine a few months ago, I discovered the most amazing frozen treat - so amazing it completely derailed and distracted me from my quest for sangria: Hyppo Gourmet Popsicles.

Hyppo has carved out a unique niche. offering such unlikely sounding flavors as Blueberry Goat Cheese, Datil Strawberry, Cucumber Lemon Mint, Pineapple Cilantro, Cracked Pepper Melon, something they call "Elvis" (peanut butter, banana and honey) and yes, they even offer sangria popsicles. Their wares are made from fresh fruit, cane sugar, and real ingredients.

They have five locations - four in St. Augustine and one I haven't been to (yet) in Orlando. (But I will.)

Their name, in case you were wondering, derives from the combination of the street name of their flagship location (Hypolita Street) and that of Saint Augustine of Hippo, for whom the city of St. Augustine is named.

Twistee Treat

I never fail to stop at this fine example of mimetic architecture, a Twistee Treat ice cream kiosk in St. Pete's Beach, when I'm passing through. All from this tiny cone-house, they offer super sundaes, typhoons, malts, milkshakes, smores, banana splits, smoothies, hand-dipped ice cream, hot dogs, corn dogs, mozzarella cheese sticks, hamburgers, french fries, pizza, chicken sandwiches, onion rings, funnel cakes, sno cones, soft homemade pretzels, and more - but for me, it's all about the double-flavored soft-serve twisty-cones.

Their website says they've only been there since 1984, but the mimetic cone surely hails from an earlier era, right? So who was the cone's previous inhabitant? I'm on the case.