Best of Cleveland 2016: Mobile Recording Studio

The striking vulnerability of Humans of New York meets the nostalgia of an ice cream social with Riff Mechanics’ Splice Cream Truck. Aboard an 1980s mail truck, Ben Smith uses his tape-to-vinyl recording system to capture people’s stories in exchange for free ice cream made by pastry chef Kayla Palmisano. “There’s a lot of people who don’t have an outlet for who they are,” he says. He’s driven his truck through Collinwood and Euclid neighborhoods and to local concerts hoping to ignite conversations by asking, “What’s your story?” He compiles the interviews into sessions, puts them on vinyl records and delivers them to local libraries. “I want people to actually go out and interact,” he says. “It’s helping me to be a little more open about myself — it’s connecting people.” facebook.com/splicecream