My earliest memory is of Uncle Gaylord's ice cream in Mill Valley--it's etched in my brain because of the "peeing" fountain that was magical to me. Would love to see a picture of that! Next is walking to Thrifty's in Montecito to buy a cone with rainbow sherbet (pronounced "sherbert" back then) for a mere ten cents (or was it a quarter?). The ice cream truck was probably the most exciting way to get the good stuff (funny thing, it regularly passes through my current neighborhood).

Then there was Baskin-Robbins off of 4th St. which had some kind of sticker campaign for their 31 flavors because I remember painstakingly drawing all of them with my outliner pens. In high school, it was Swensen's (Montecito again) where all my friends worked, flanked on either side by Pinky's Pizza (major SRHS hang out) and Trader Joe's, where I worked after school (my fondness for cheese was--and still is--greater than ice cream).

Since college, I've rarely gone anywhere "just" for ice cream, but with little ones coming up, it's nice that there are new places like Powell's Sweet Shoppe in Novato that serves gelato, and of course Cold Stone, but also Marin institutions like Silbermann's in Northgate One. What are your favorite old...and new ice creameries?