'Tis the Season

It's finally summer, and in New York, that means it's five different seasons at once.

First of all, it's the hot season.

In San Antonio, heat and humidity meet you like a wall as soon as you get out of the airport, and I will maintain every day until my dying day that the heat in Texas is a lot worse than the heat here.

But San Antonio has a cooling infrastructure (central air, ceiling fans) that for whatever reason doesn't exist in The City. There's just better internal air movement down there.

As a result, and I noticed this for the first time the other week while helping my cousin the revolutionary in to his new place, I no longer even notice when I'm pouring sweat.


Second, it's smell season.

It doesn't stink in Texas for the simple reason that there are no people walking around on the streets down there unless they are walking to their car. People mean waste and waste means smell.

I've never found the stench unbearable, but I know people, even people who grew up here (Vickyheart comes to mind) who just can't take it anymore and occasionally have to run off to live in New Jersey or something equally absurd.

Third, it is roach season.

Roaches freak me out a lot less than they did when I first move to the city, but they're definitely the worst of the five things listed here.

I crushed my first roach of the summer on a subway platform this morning. The worst I've seen was on a turkey leg outside the construction on the west side of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.


My last roommate would flee the room and sometimes the whole apartment if she thought she even heard a roach.

Roaches are a good reason to keep a clean place. Mice are more manageable. I'm sort of hoping they come back now that I have a cat, but so far they've been too smart.

Fourth, it's real estate season. Everyone but everyone, from the cute little red-haired girl who lived down the street to My Cousin the Revolutionary to my friend Gigi, who is overjoyed to finally be escaping Jersey.

New Yorkers love love love talking real estate. This Park Slope Reader guide to Park Slope blogs [PDF] has four categories: food, real estate, literary arts and kids. That's my neighborhoods priorities in a nutshell.

By the way, if you are interested in a two-bedroom in a small building in Prospect Heights for about $2000 a month, and you are cool, my email address is on the top right there.


Finally, it's tourist season. Even in Texas, people always assumed I was a New Yorker even when I wasn't, but it didn't take long for me to be able to spot the visitors on any subway platform, public park or street corner.

It takes maybe three months to understand comprehensively how to move in this city (layout, busses, rush hour, etc.), so the easiest spots to pick out tourists are sidewalks and subways.

They have to talk a lot about how to get where they're going, travel in groups that always look similar to each other, often seem travel weary because they don't tend to find the time to just sit down, and have a mildly annoying habit of just stopping in awkward places that make it difficult to walk around them.

Tourists also look different from New Yorkers, who are slimmer then most Americans just because we walk everywhere.

I don't want to sound anti-tourist because I know it's an important part of the city and brings in money, but if I am anti-tourist, I come by it honestly.

I grew up in the King William District of San Antonio, a big tourist destination for a big tourist city, and I lived in a front bedroom facing the street. Tour busses came by every hour or so. As I result, I spent my entire childhood paranoid behind closed bedroom shades.

I realize New York must sound pretty bad, infested as it is by heat, smells, roaches and tourists. The fact is, New York is always gorgeous as long as it's not obscenely cold. There is no place I'd rather be.