New York set a record today: 102 degrees. Woo woo, bring on the dancing bears.  A veritable wall o’heat smacked me in the face every time I had to go outside today; people stumbled along the sidewalks in various states of undress and sweat-shockedness. And, apparently, in the heat, all social conventions give way, which is why I and my fellow straphangers were treated to the sight of a woman using the air-conditioned comfort of an uptown R train to mop off her armpits, slowly, thoroughly, delicately.  Mmmm.

How hot? Sooo hot. So hot that PC Richards, the appliance store near my apartment, is selling air conditioners so fast it no longer brings them into the store. They’ve set up a little credit-card kiosk outside the store and the air conditioners are just stacked in boxes on the sidewalk.  The door to the store is open, however, to allow the interior air-conditioned air to pour out onto the sidewalk. Way to rock the energy-awareness, guys.

If you can resist the allure of freon, however, it means that on my block you can get frozen yogurt with fresh berries;

participate in an ice-cream truck price war;

peruse belts and phone covers and sunglasses and straw hats and shoulder bags made from brightly colored Indian cotton;

find good prices on grapes, avocadoes, cherries and tomatoes (what’s a little bus exhaust residue if you can get red grapes for less than two bucks a pound, plus the extra bunch the nice vendor always tosses in?);

I haven’t even mentioned the taco truck and the waffle truck that come later in the evening.  

Sometimes I’m just amazed that anyone even bothers to open a store any more. That just seems so…20th century. These days, everything should be sold from a truck, or a pushcart, or online.

Then we could knock down all the buildings and in a few centuries it could look like this again:

Except,you know, with food trucks, pushcart vendors, and air-conditioner salesmen.