SANTA CRUZ— To celebrate National Ice Cream Day, Don Lane took his statewide ice cream tour to four Santa Cruz shops on Sunday afternoon.
Lane, former mayor of Santa Cruz and founder of Saturn Café, is a lifelong ice cream enthusiast. Both of his businesses, Saturn Café and YO’s Dessert Palace (a teen job training program in an ice cream shop), served ice cream. He and his daughter even have matching ice cream cone tattoos.
Abra Allen, right, and her husband Chip donned ice cream cone party hats as they joined the Ice Cream Tour of California on Sunday. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Ice Cream Tour of California participants filled Gran Gelato Caffe on Cedar Street in Santa Cruz Sunday afternoon. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Don Lane was joined by his wife Mary Howe, left, and other family and friends as he came home for the Santa Cruz section of his month-long Ice Cream Tour of California. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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Abra Allen, right, and her husband Chip donned ice cream cone party hats as they joined the Ice Cream Tour of California on Sunday. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
After considering the idea for years, Lane picked this month to tour over 90 local ice cream shops in nearly every part of the state. July, National Ice Cream Month, seemed like the perfect time to make the trip. He set out to Southern California at the very beginning of the month, making his way from San Diego to Los Angeles and up through the Central Valley. He met up with family and friends throughout his travels, bringing companions to each stop on his tour.
“It’s a really beautiful thing to sit and eat ice cream with someone, because you’re having fun,” Lane said. “It’s a light mood.”
He arrived home to Santa Cruz on Saturday and decided that for National Ice Cream Day on Sunday, he would take the opportunity to visit several local shops that make their flavors in-house. Lane and a group of friends took their ice cream crawl through Mission Hill Creamery and Coffee, Gran Gelato Caffé, The Penny Ice Creamery and Ice Cream on Fair, where Marianne’s and Polar Bear ice cream is made and served.
The group wore party hats resembling ice cream cones, and walked or biked between each stop. Lane rode a bike adorned with the logo for his California ice cream tour. He also had a special dish shaped like the World Cup trophy, as the crawl got underway just minutes after Spain took the victory in the FIFA World Cup.
Lane, who has always followed the ice cream shops in town, said the day presented an opportunity to celebrate the city’s several local creameries.
“For a relatively small town to have four local ice cream makers is pretty special,” Lane said. “We’ve got some cool local businesses doing some really creative things.”
Sunday happened to also be Mission Hill Creamery’s 16th anniversary. Owner David Kumec held a bag full of prize options for customers to choose from. Some lucky guests left the store with gift cards or prints taken from the wall.
“It’s 16 years of spreading love and happiness,” Kumec said. “I think it’s a fantastic celebration, and Don is the ice cream mayor. … We all want to celebrate with him.”
Don Lane enjoys a five-flavor sample at Gran Gelato Caffe on Sunday in a dish created for for him by his daughter Soji Howe, a Santa Cruz ceramicist, especially for the occasion. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Don Lane holds a proclamation by Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley naming Sunday as Ice Cream Day in the city of Santa Cruz and encouraging all Santa Cruz residents to enjoy ice cream at one of the city’s ice cream shops. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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Don Lane enjoys a five-flavor sample at Gran Gelato Caffe on Sunday in a dish created for for him by his daughter Soji Howe, a Santa Cruz ceramicist, especially for the occasion. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Gran Gelato Caffé was the newest shop on Sunday’s tour, having opened in March. Owners Luciana Costanza and Sandro Costanza took a month-long gelato class in Italy to learn how to create traditional and innovative flavors, including hazelnut, popcorn and even mozzarella.
“This is so exciting, because we have the opportunity to share our passion with everyone in Santa Cruz,” Luciana Costanza said.
Each of the businesses that Lane and his crew visited received a proclamation from Mayor Fred Keeley, acknowledging the shops and the ice cream holiday.
The Sunday crawl is far from the end of Lane’s California ice cream journey. Over the next few weeks, Lane will take day trips to nearby towns including Monterey, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, sampling both unique and classic flavors. He’ll end his tour with a trip up the state’s north coast, ending in Eureka.
With 55 ice cream shops under his belt so far, Lane said any strategy he had going into the tour has now fallen apart. Sometimes, he said, he’ll go for a coffee-chocolate combination, his all-time favorite. But other times, he’s drawn in by a shop’s signature. In just a few weeks, he’s had black licorice, tequila and even tomato basil flavored ice cream scoops.
“It’s been an adventure,” Lane said.