Why I Thought/THink that NY Sucks in Summer

they still do this near me

• in our house with 2 parents and 4 kids, there was only a cheap a.c. unit in the TV room. we mainly slept upstairs (where the heat rose), barely had fans for some reasons. we had  one big attic fan which blew hot attic air,  thru i think a 4 by 4 vent, which was supposed to cool us off. god that hot air up there never moved, i wonder how we slept at all. hate to complain about the people that gave me so much, but that was one of those instances where we were supposed to tough it out. like sickness, injury, bad jobs etc. 
• i grew up thinking that all  beaches suck because of the ones in NY and NJ. still think they're pretty weak. at least back then,  places like Jones beach: not the cleanest water, get burned (sunblock not as common?), get sand everywhere.  is a place so great, when you have to shower afterwards? like sex with my ex wife yuk yuk. 
• school went til late June and there always seemed to be a heat wave attacking us at some point, and of course there was no a.c., little circulation in those huge brick buildings. 
•  i did a good deal of theatre pretty young. since i was in school,  i did it  much in the summer. again it seemed like a heat wave would often strike right at opening nite: in often big heavy costumes, big heavy makeup, wigs, hot lights, halls without a.c., little circulation
• again my fervent environmentalism kept me from even using a fan in the hottest month in NYC records, July 1999: http://thekrock.blogspot.com/2010/07/to-past-darkly-summer-1999.html
• i really want to know  why, if there's no sunlight at all  down below, every  subway tunnel feels like you're in a level of  hell? every other subterranean  level in the world is cool. 

keep in mind I've lived in the Mojave desert, L.A., FLorida and Texas in Summers, and i still think that NY summers are some of the hottest i've experienced. 

To the Past Darkly: Summer 1999

this Summer in NYC is on track to i think be one of the hottest in recorded history (after last year was one of the coolest, wettest). it brings back ugly memories of the summer of 1999 in NYC for me.

me and my roommate in spring had moved out from our apartment that had a roommate that went nuts: started yelling, cursing, crying, i called the cops on her.

• we found a nice place in Astoria Queens, but we found it thru a broker, i was in debt and was penniless. had several jobs: men's room attendant in swanky club, and went into a job that seems perfect for me but was and is a nightmare:
• tour guide job with a company that was eventually kicked out of the city. we had buses that caught on fire, drivers that were parolees that hated me because i didn't get tipped much ( i gave good tours, but didn't push customers to tip), no a.c. of course, , a comp;any that didn't give a shit about anything besides raking in money
• July was the hottest month on record in NYC, may still be, averaged in the high 80s, many days going into 100. almost never rained.
• i was such an environmentalist, and somewhat ignorant,, in that i thought that using a fan was a huge user of electricity, so i would broil in our place with no a.c or fan for most of the time, and the place was brick and we were up stairs.
• it was the last summer of my 20s and i was so busy earning all of $9 an hour, especially on weekends, i never got time off to go to the beach or anything. every chick i met was stuck up (surprise in NYC haha). .
• my roommate's parents came to stay with us for at least a week, maybe 2. no spare bedroom. examples of their annoying habits: the father would fart regularly, . the mother would answer the phone and give it to me when i told her i wasn't available. so 2 weeks, i was broke, and these folks came and lived there for free.

i hate to draw parallels between that summer and this one but at least some has improved. bu the heat, the cost of living for a struggling artist, maybe you can see why i quit a new job as a tour guide. actually the job is even worse in some ways.