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They’re loco for cocoa!
Bundled-up Brooklyn families frolicked in Prospect Park as Winter Storm Fern blasted through Sunday — and two 13-year-old entrepreneurs were on hand to serve the perfect treat for the snowy hijinks.
“Get your hot chocolate! Hottest chocolate in all of Park Slope!” shouted Aaron Rappaport atop a hill transformed into a sled run packed with winter wonder-seekers.
Aaron and his friend and young business partner Ted Driscoll said they decided to hawk the hot chocolate because the relentless snow — which reached as much as 12 inches in other parts of Brooklyn — had jammed up their usual main winter enterprise: shoveling stoops.
“We have five orders for stoops already, but we can’t start shoveling until the snow slows down a bit, so we figured we could do this while we waited,” Aaron said.
Ted added, “We’re set up to sell 30 cups” — as he good-naturedly complained about lugging a folding table through the snow, slush and sleet.
“We’re out here to make some money.”
The $3-a-cup hot-chocolate stand proved a hit with the families that flocked to the park for frozen fun in the most snow the city had seen since 2021.
Four-year-old Park Sloper Talia Fackler rolled off her sled when she heard the siren call of steamy hot chocolate, running toward the table while her mom Hannah Fackler, 38, asked the boys if they took Venmo. They did.
Hannah Fackler said sledding is her daughter’s favorite thing.
“She saw the big kids sledding, and we had to run over to the hardware store and get her a sled, and now every time it snows, we’re out here,” she said. “We’re going to have to drag her out of here when her face just starts getting too red.”
The Fackler fam was far from alone.
Nearby, Tait Foster, 39, and his daughter Georgia, 4, were racing their sled against fellow dad Artis and his 4-year-old Annabelle.
“Most of these kids go to school together, and they’ll be out here all day. I’ll have to drag Georgia out of here,” he said, lamenting not wearing thermals in the chilly weather.
While New York City public school kids faced the prospect of a remote learning day Monday, Park Slope mom Stacey Gomez, 46, predicted a snow day for her two youngsters who go to private school.
“I would be annoyed and really upset if my kids didn’t get a snow day tomorrow. It’s hard on working parents,” she said. “But this is just heaven.”
But not all kids found the wintry weather tempting.
Gaby Marraro, 30, a mom and Brooklyn software engineer, said her 10- and 14-year-old kids did not want to come out in the snow.
The same couldn’t be said for Marraro’s mutt Goose.
“I don’t think I could have kept this dog out of the park today,” she said. “Look around — it’s a dog wonderland, everyone is happy to be here today! This is a fantastic winter wonderland.”
James Ekenstedt, 32, and his fiancée Anna Stratton-Brook, 32, bundled their 7-year-old Chihuahua mix Mika in boots and a coat to brave the cold.
“The snow is very fluffy and, yeah, it’s just kind of perfect,” Ekenstedt said.
Stratton-Brook added, “Except for the wind!
“The wind is really tough.”
Most parkgoers, human and canine alike, bundled up for the bone-chilling cold and sometimes-blinding snow — but not Adam Perez.
Perez, 32, a software engineer from Crown Heights, wore shorts as he hoofed it to the park with his girlfriend Annie Huryk, 29, an art therapist, in hopes of building a snowman.
“Yeah, this is just me. I never wear pants unless it’s like someone’s wedding,” Perez quipped.
English (US)