Summer in the city used to be HOT

and I mean, like Africa hot. not that I am saying that the summer temperatures these days are actually cooler based on temperature. It's most likely the opposite, with Global warming it's got to be hotter on average. But NYC has changed since I was a youngster. We never had A/C until I was well into puberty. I would open my window to get some air, but air didn't move for the whole months of July and August, unless you stood right next to moving traffic or a train as it pulled into the sauna-like station. I used to call it "Swamp Ass" season because as soon as you got out of the shower, your ass got swampy from sweat before you could even dry off.

Now, when you go outside, you are suddenly hit by the constant hum of thousands of A/C's working overtime. it's like a steady all around low toned sound that never goes away until the temps get below 75 degrees. all those mysterious drops of water that ding you in the dome-piece are most likely from their condensation water. At least that's what I always hope :)

Subway cars were no break either, hot as shit, and even less oxygen, the fact that the windows were always broken in the "open" position only meant that the stinky sewage smell of the hot tunnels got to assault your sinus' in full force.

You could be walking down the block and see a garbage truck cross the intersection a block away. 4 minutes later, when you finally crossed the street, walking through the still dank wake of the long gone truck of rotten garbage, the nose ambush in the air was SO strong that your eyes would tear and your gag reflex would make you lurch forward. It was like an invisible wall o' funk. something the army should actually look into for possible non-lethal weaponry, the NYC garbage truck in mid August could take out whole platoons.


another thing i remember about those days in the summer, besides RUNNING to playgrounds with working sprinklers or broken fire-hydrants, was that you could always tell non new yorkers at a corner when a bus would pull out from a bus stop. New Yorkers were the people who quickly backed up far away from the bus. the tourists were the ones who got blasted, face first, by the huge, hot, exhaust clouds that used to fart out of the back of these gargantuan diesel engines. nowadays they are hybrids with exhaust pipes that stick out the top and aim the hot blasts up into the ether where they belong. but back in the day, one good blast from a bus exhaust could turn your white Le Tigra windbreaker outfit black and sooty, and fill your lungs with ultra heated smoggy exhaust. enough to kill an old French person in a single blast.

I swear the race riots, the murders, the crime, the craziness was only instigated by the awful, inescapable heat...