Considering the past leaseholders of the building, Lady Moo Moo owner Steve Lipschutz said, “A lot of sage was burnt.” Lady Moo Moo Too (1210 Halsey St.) opened on the second Friday of May to cleanse the old autobody shop neighboring Bushwick’s Irving Square Park.

An expansion of the original Lady Moo Moo (365 Chauncey St.), which opened across Broadway in 2013, its exterior rich blue, cotton candy food-dyed to look like sky, is singular in the area, unlike the contemporary exterior of nearby They Say That (615 Wilson Ave.) or the nondescript brown of the apartment buildings to Moo Moo Too’s left.

In a line that stretched to the door, I spoke with an older couple who turned out to be owner Steve Lipschutz’s parents. They had come here from South Connecticut. I asked his mother how she liked Bushwick. “For me, it’s how the community has welcomed Steven. They’ve been excited for him, and I think that’s been a really positive thing.”

Families and found families (coteries of people with half-sleeves) hung around. Instead of the unwelcoming post-Scandinavian austerity often deployed in retail spaces because it’s cheap, Moo Moo’s lovably dumb cow mascot, blackboard menu, and loud blue paint inside evoke early 2000s Nickelodeon shows.

On moving into Bushwick, Lipschutz said he wanted to be a part of the local community, “whether it’s a family that’s been here for decades, or someone who just moved into the neighborhood.” Moo Moo partners with schools, with the Campaign Against Hunger in Bed-Stuy, and even hassled the DOT to repair the streetlight at Wilson and Halsey. “And I have to give kudos to my team,” Lipschutz added.

After Hurricane Ida flooded their original location, the Ocean Hill community stepped in to provide aid to Moo Moo. Behind the scenes, Lipschutz assisted in five basement cleanouts for his neighbors. Lipschutz was too modest to advertise it at the time. His mother said of him, “We [her and her husband named Spike] created an incredible kid. He has always paid it forward.”

There are actually bad owners out there building retail fiefdoms, like Or Bokobza of General Irving, who decided serving coffee wasn’t as meaningful as contributing to an ongoing genocide. Lipschutz and Moo Moo are the opposite, part of a more conscious restaurant movement that seeks to more ethically navigate changing neighborhoods.

I didn’t try any flavors, and I saw no one else doing it, either. It was a polite atmosphere that knew taste-testing flavors is about as embarrassing as tying your shoe in public or Shazaming a song at a bar, as if you forgot what chocolate tastes like, or you’ve never heard of pistachio. I had the vanilla root beer float ($11). I could see and taste the vanilla, a compliment I often hear in cooking videos. It was as good as a video of ice cream. There is no higher compliment.

I took my float outside and spoke to Chad, who lives nearby and works as an immigration attorney. I asked him if he was a pro- or anti-immigration attorney, and he already seemed done with me (can’t ever be too sure, though).

“Ice cream means families hanging outside,” Chad said. He had moved to Bushwick from Bed-Stuy (his place there was “way too small”) and had the “intention of adding a third.”  Chad Jr., an infant boy, sat on his rocking leg.

Junior cried and cried for more ice cream. “He doesn’t like when I’m in charge of the food,” Senior said of Junior, who didn’t yet know how to appreciate life as a child. He didn’t know he’d have to pay taxes one day. Family was manifesting here again after years of Florida moveouts and inbound partygoers.

When I hear people say they’ve had a good day, I have the urge to search the specifics of that day’s weather, the stock market performance, and weighty headlines to prove—whether they know it or not—that they’re liars who think I’m stupid, stoopid, stupid!

Great days take shape in so many ways. Lady Moo Moo Too will be a good day for many. When I passed by later that evening, there was a West Village Line down the block.

P.S. The air smelled of smoke that day. On Weirfield, across Irving Square, several apartments burned. A rain came down soon after.

There’s always an urge to find causality, to perceive the smoke as a Vatican signal, the fire and subsequent rain as something elemental and redemptive. Could this be the end of the vinyl-sided old and Zionist cafes, and the beginning of a blue-painted new that’s so considerate? In which case, what did the smoke signal? The power of an ice cream store? Could one ask for dumber rhetoricals? This wasn’t the time. There were kids on Weirfield, still in charter school-branded polos. They no longer had homes.

I spoke to a longtime resident and Community Board 4 crank. She warned me to confirm there were sprinklers in my apartment building, but didn’t take the bait on a conspiracy of landlords setting properties ablaze in Bushwick and Ridgewood. We agreed I was probably just paying more attention now to what was always happening.Under the shade, the kids organized their belongings and tended to pets cowering in crates. Their parents hung around, hugging and laughing. Sometimes family can’t be killed. It felt impossible to speak to them. There were enough microphone-holders still around. Enough had been said.