It hit 97 degrees this week and my Harlem apartment turned into a tandoor. My AC is a window unit the size of a shoebox that makes a sound like it's personally suffering. So I did what everyone did. I went outside.
Here is the thing about a real NYC heat wave. It is miserable, yes, but it also does something to the city. It pulls everyone out of their apartments and onto the stoops and the sidewalks and into a kind of forced, sweaty community.
On Frederick Douglass Boulevard somebody had opened a fire hydrant. Kids were screaming with joy in the spray. An older man had dragged a folding chair to the curb and was holding court like a king. Someone was grilling. Someone was playing dominoes. The whole block was just outside.
I bought a mango from the fruit cart guy who cuts it and puts chili and lime on it, and let me tell you, that's basically street-cart raw mango from back home wearing a New York accent. I stood there eating it, dripping, watching the hydrant kids, and I felt so completely part of something.
That's the trick of a NYC heat wave. It's awful. And then it makes the city smaller and warmer and more human than any perfect 72-degree day ever could.
My apartment is still a tandoor. But my block felt like a family reunion I didn't know I was invited to.
Summer in New York is best when it's too hot to be alone.
Love,