Sara’s Restaurant on Peninsula Drive. | Photo from tripadvisor.com
Without further ado, your Idiotville feel-good story of the week:
https://www.goerie.com/news/20190401/whippy-dip-keeps-customers-coming-back
Sara’s is open! Whippy Dip is open! Creamland is open! The snow isn’t going to hide in the ditches and shadows forever. Temps are already creeping into the 50’s, and if you’re into going down to Presque Isle to catch a sunset or some birds or if you just like the sound of the waves crashing in, now you can do all that with a Sara’s black raspberry milkshake in your hand. Or a peanut butter one. Or if you’re wild – both of those and a hot dog. No one is judging. Maybe get a burger and some fries with that spicy ranch of theirs. I want it all.
This is the signal we wait for every year. It tells us the prior six months of soul-crushing weather is over, and it’s (mostly) safe to come outside. “I don’t mind the cold” is something I’ll trot out again next fall to stop myself from going totally insane. I’ve written it here on this blog, and I want to say I believed it, but now that the ice cream shops are open I’m questioning all of that because the thought of an ice cream cone on a park bench wearing a t-shirt and squinting into a sunset just feels so good.
I encourage you to hit up all of these places, plus some smaller mom and pop ice cream shops not listed in the article. Sara’s, Whippy Dip and Creamland are Idiotville institutions and will be fine without you, but there are little ice cream shops all over the place that will take your $4 and hand out something equally delightful.
There’s an ice cream shop at Castle Mini Golf on Route 5 in Fairview, there’s another at the far east end of 38th Street where Cooper Road meets Shannon, and probably a dozen more. You get the idea. These people don’t get rich selling ice cream. They pay teenagers to learn how to work their first jobs and they just need people like you to show up once in a while.
I’m going. Back in January I decided to skip any thoughts of working out as a New Year’s resolution and went economic instead: I’m patronizing as many Erie businesses as I can this year. I just now added an addendum to that resolution: a hefty part of it will be ice cream. Great for my health? No, but I’m an adult and no one can stop this from happening.
Get out there and enjoy some of the very best Idiotville has to offer. Help out a small business while you’re at it. These places opening up for another season is something good to happen in Erie.
Idiotville 