Heat Wave

This piece – about what it’s like here during a heat wave – is so right ON. Makes me laugh out loud.

I won’t sit here and try to tell you that it’s like The Truman Show over here. It ain’t. Looting happens. Desperation happens. People lose their shit. Eight million people in one place, not everyone’s going to behave all the time. But when a transformer blows up on 4th Avenue at midnight and the city sends 30 trucks from 11 different fire houses, six black-and-whites, a transit van, a Salvation Army mobile transfer unit, the bomb squad, the K-9 squad, and a bunch of dudes in construction helmets, it’s not a riot situation. It’s an open a window, lean out to rubberneck, see your neighbor doing the same thing, wave and ask her what she knows, tell her what you know that you heard on a police scanner on the Web because you are nosy and a nerd, head downstairs to ask the deli guys what they know because the deli guys function like a subplot seismograph for your block (see also: nosy; nerd), buy some coffee, eavesdrop, swap theories with the lady with the Pomeranians who lives on 2nd Street, swap Pomeranian Lady’s theory with Afrika Bambaataa T-Shirt Guy whose friend knows a dude whose brother works at the Lyceum and the brother says it’s not the subway at least (“thank you, Simone”), bum out a cigarette to a cop, hear it’s not an evacuation deal, and go back upstairs situation. Jury duty, same thing. Five prospective jurors, one Times crossword…you find a way to work it out. Especially if it’s the Friday.

Hahahaha So TRUE.

And with the heat? This observation is bang on the money:

Eighty-five, eighty-eight, everyone’s still in the game with the linen separates and the eye liner and the neatly knotted tie, pretending to ignore the convection current currently turning everyone on the N/R/Q/W platform into jerky. Any temperature starting with a nine, a collective decision is made, unwittingly, that any pretense of cool in the social sense is only contributing to the lack of cool in the weather sense, and it’s just out the window, everywhere you go — entrances into department stores accompanied by bursts of the Hallelujah chorus, Hiltonoids pulling out their camis from their chests and just blatantly blowing down between their boobs, pocket squares used to wipe armpits, moms putting bags of ice into strollers under the babies, married couples picking the longest movie out in theaters and catching some sweat-free shut-eye in the back row. You walk past a pod of teenage girls while drinking one Diet Coke and rolling the other one around under your tank top when it’s only eighty-four, you’re going to get mocked. You do it when it’s ninety-four, you’re going to get copied.

“the linen separates” hahaha

You’ve got to read the whole thing. She is so great.