Trippin’ :: Museum of Ice Cream, San Francisco

For months on my Instagram feed, curiosity poked at me more and more as I watched friends (millennials mostly) posting vivid photos of themselves at a place called the Museum of Ice Cream. Could there really be such a place? Yes. There was proof. Week after week, people sharing pictures of themselves and their friends practically drowning in pools of rainbow sprinkles, in front of pastel facades and neon lighted signs. The faces in these photos couldn’t help but smile, pure joy dripping from the posts. I wanted to be among those faces.

So I googled Museum of Ice Cream and quickly learned that passes for it had been sold out for months. Typical Dianderthal – still lacing up my sneaks when the game is already in the fourth quarter.

At some point during the summer, a friend of mine reached out to me with a plan. The Museum of Ice Cream, it seemed, would be opening up another location in a few weeks with a whole slew of tickets available. Just a bit up the road in San Francisco. A quick 70-minute plane ride from Long Beach.

Great idea, I said to myself, already seeing my frame-worthy photos tacked to the living room wall (and dotting my IG feed). It wouldn’t be too much trouble to turn the beginnings of a hatched plan real, with a dad who’s Bay Area adjacent in Stockton and plenty of Jet Blue points. The biggest expense would be the rental car, which I’d split with Jeannine, the friend who’d suggested the trip.

And there’d be ice cream!

Worth it? Certainly. Although we were a little late to work and school Monday morning due to our late Sunday ticket time (the online queue opened at 10:00 am sharp a few weeks before we went, and slots went fast), we had a great time.

Even now, I find stowed-away bits of rainbow sprinkle (they’re plastic, and hopefully sprayed down with disinfectant every few hours or so) in a purse or pair of shoes. Really, there’s always a good time to be had in San Francisco, which was my mother’s favorite city in the world, leaving me with an unshakeable fondness for the place. So I have no regrets about my short, semi-nonsensical getaway to visit a museum fascinated with ice cream.

Not even on the two occasions since my visit that dates were extended and new tickets released for the Los Angeles site.

Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco
1 Grant Avenue, and exhibits and Los Angeles and Miami

In addition to the museum, we pre-gamed at Humphry Slocombe and at Ghirardelli’s…

Had an impromptu photo session…

And dined at Gott’s Roadside.

Oh. And saw a homeless woman take a shit on the Valentino storefront window. No pics of that.