Is it hot enough for ya? Don't you hate hearing that? Imagine a world in which no one, except maybe the movie theater, had air conditioning. In 1998, playwright Arthur Miller wrote a nostalgic piece about the New York City summers of his youth in the 1920s, during which people had to use their creative juices to beat the heat.
Reading the essay might make you feel cooler, or at least appreciate the modern convenience of air conditioning. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Arthur Leipzig)
We kids would jump onto the back steps of the slow-moving, horse-drawn ice wagons and steal a chip or two; the ice smelled vaguely of manure but cooled palm and tongue.
People on West 110th Street, where I lived, were a little too bourgeois to sit out on their fire escapes, but around the corner on 111th and farther uptown mattresses were put out as night fell, and whole families lay on those iron balconies in their underwear.
Reading the essay might make you feel cooler, or at least appreciate the modern convenience of air conditioning. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Arthur Leipzig)
Most people here don't have air conditioning because the temperature rarely gets about 90 or so at the peak of summer.
That year was an exception. I think it got up to about 110 in the day time and I lived upstairs from a pizza place. That place was bloody -effing hot.
So I slept on the roof.
It would be nice to see more of a revival of sleeping porches; let nature quietly provide a cool breeze.