It is the first big snow of the year. And so, as always, children are pulling out snow boots. Mothers are mixing hot chocolate and neighbors are shoveling their walks. And, as he has been doing for five years now, Zach Burroughs is back, dashing across across 15th Street and onto your Facebook and Twitter feeds. He still isn’t wearing a jacket. And he is still, of course, carrying an ice cream cone.
In honor of this most precious annual Washington ritual — ice cream guy going viral — we bring you, once again, the backstory of the meme that won’t die. Eric Athas talked to photographer Ricky Carioti about his now-famous photo from January, 2011 and wrote this:
It started at about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday when Carioti was editing pictures on his laptop at The Post. Two editors asked him if he could snap some weather shots. They needed photos for the Web and the front page of the paper.“I was like, ‘it’s not going to be great right now, it’s not even snowing yet,’” Carioti told me. As he left The Post building at 15th and L streets NW, a sleet-snow mix began to intensify.“I see this guy running down the street, no jacket, and he has something in his hand,” Carioti says. “So I just focused my camera on him and I just kept shooting him as he was running right toward me. Then I realized, holy cow, he’s got an ice cream cone in his hand.”Carioti took a quick look at the pictures on his camera and then chased after Burroughs to get his name. Minutes later, the photo was on the washingtonpost.com home page and eventually ended up above the fold on the front page of the newspaper.
Burroughs became Internet famous and came to the Post to answer some of the many questions the photograph raises, such as, “What the what?”
“I don’t even like ice cream that much,” said Burroughs, an attorney who works on 15th Street. He says his coworkers had been eating ice cream earlier in the day and he just couldn’t resist.Besides, he thought, Pizza Autentica is right across the street and they serve pistachio-flavored gelato – his favorite. And the last time he looked out the window, he had seen only light snow falling, so he assumed there would be no need for a coat.Once he arrived at street level, a sleet and snow mix was falling heavily, quickly and horizontally. But Burroughs was determined.“They have pistachio ice cream and I love pistachio. So whether it was snowing or not, I was going to go get it,” says 25-year-old Burroughs.
It’s the kind of determination this country was built on. Thank you, Zach Burroughs, for making winter — and Snowzilla — great.
