Parlors

A visit to a frozen yogurt shop today brought up thoughts of Farrell's and similar "parlours" themed around the Gay 90s/Progressive Era/Third Great Awakening period. That they are clearly of a Second Turning is evident from the distinctive clothes that are worn there - brightly patterned shirts, straw hats, and what's up with the garters on the arms? So why does it seem natural for Main Street USA to have a themed ice cream parlor  - how did that period get associated with ice cream?

An attempt to investigate this question via Google kept pointing out just how closely the two were tied together. Search for Gay 90s ice cream and there's a shop called exactly that in Oregon; try 1900 ice cream and there's a place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. There's the invention of the ice cream cone in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair - unless you think it was invented at in 1896. There still isn't much saying why this connection exists.

Based on cursory research, though, the connection seems more about business processes than generational associations. The ice cream maker - the old fashioned kind using rock salt and ice and a hand crank - was patented in 1843, at a point when ice (harvested from northern lakes) was becoming more commonly available. Ice making machines and refrigeration would follow over the next few decades. These made ice cream simple enough that opening new businesses around it was feasible - and with the primary ingredients being eggs, milk, flavorings and cold, the barriers to entry were low. This made a large number possible (and presumably profitable) at once, resulting in a strong association between the two.

(Video game arcades could be said to follow a similar path, which may explain why they are so strongly associated with the 1980s....but does that suggest that this sort of boom is more likely in a Second Turning?)