Capitol Hill may not be the gayborhood it once was, but it's still near and dear to the hearts of many Queer people today. Blame Amazon, blame the tech bros, or blame entropy itself for the diffusion of queerness into other parts of King County — there's a more pressing problem on the Hill right now, and it goes beyond the Queer community. It concerns everyone. Yet coverage, it seems, has been sparse.

Since at least mid-April this year, the QFC on Broadway has been keeping its ice cream locked up. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog published a story on the issue on April 20, citing baffled customers on Twitter and pointing out a trend of ramped-up security measures at the Broadway branch.

The chain's parent company, Kroger, didn't respond to the Blog for comment, and I didn't bother to check with them either. This timeless brand of hard-hitting, ironclad journalism couldn't be wasted on a labyrinth of corporate bureaucracy.

To better inform our readers, I put on my investigator hat and went straight to the scene to see exactly what was going on. Was QFC a Dreyer's defender, a Häagen-Dazs hostage taker, or perhaps both?

I arrived at the joint on a busy Saturday evening, having taken the long bus ride from West Seattle. The first thing I noticed was the security guards. The front of the store had two or three men with short hair and dark, bulky uniforms.

They patrolled back and forth, or simply stood by and eyed passing patrons. The patches on their uniforms said something like "Theft Prevention," and I wondered at the possible cost of hiring and equipping this crew. Maybe they had always been in-house but never stationed so overtly until now.

The same went for the cameras and live-feed screens reminding shoppers that they were under surveillance. Compared to the checkout at the Safeway back in West Seattle, the place was like a transnational border crossing. Just how much ice cream had been smuggled out of the place anyway?

Searching the frozen goods section didn't take long. Turns out, not all the ice cream was locked up. Any container larger than a quart was left unguarded. It was the pints that were protected, with a locked latch at the top of each door.

A red intercom box with a silver button was affixed to one door, with a sign instructing shoppers to press it for assistance. I pressed the button. An LED lit up green. I prepared myself for a wait spanning entire minutes, but before I could even fidget, a man hailed me from down the aisle.

He was another security guard, in a different uniform than the ones at the front: a blue button-up, black dress pants, and a more relaxed disposition. He asked me if I was trying to get ice cream, and told me that most of the locks had been broken by would-be thieves.

He didn't flinch when I showed him my press pass, nor when I said I was there to cover the ice cream lockdown, but he wouldn't give me his name. According to his account, theft at the store had gotten so bad that higher-ups beyond the store's management had arranged for the current measures.

It wasn't just the ice cream being nabbed, either. He said beer, candy, and other sweets were also threatened. As for why the thieves would only steal pints rather than the larger containers, he chalked that up to a lack of intelligence. I brushed that notion aside and reasoned that a pint is much easier to hide on one's person.

I never got a clear answer on who the thieves were, but the guard said many were repeat offenders, who sometimes argued that it was within their rights to take the ice cream pro bono.

I thanked the man for the information, albeit taken with a grain of salt given his position, and left the QFC with a box of wasabi peas (which I did pay for, before anyone asks). I still wonder if all that imposing security is actually saving QFC money, but at this rate, by Christmas we'll all need a burro, a Sherpa, and an official summons from the Queen of England just to purchase enough Neapolitan ice cream to last the week.