newyorker:

“Before Air-Conditioning”

“The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting ‘Hot enough for ya? Ha-ha!’ ” Read more.

“Under Construction”

“On the Fourth of July weekend, we got up onto the old West Side Elevated Highway (closed but not yet demolished) and went walking past the new World Trade Center towers (brutalist but not yet tragic) and didn’t see another person in any direction. Romantically deserted vistas were what I wanted in a city when I was twenty-one.” Read more.

“Tiny Jumpers Rule at the Double Dutch Summer Classic”

“The sound of taut ropes lashing on concrete at short intervals is, to me, the sound of summer.” Read more.

“New York Local”

“So I made our local dinner. Aside from the spices and the olive oil—which we allowed ourselves under what is called a ‘Marco Polo exemption,’ common to localism—everything in the dinner hailed from, or had at least seen its first or last days, within the city limits of New York.” Read more.

“The Swimmer: Manhattan Edition”

“I got the idea for my best summer stunt during the bleakest days of last winter. When things seemed like they couldn’t get worse, I started to think about swimming across Manhattan—about plowing through every pool on the island.” Read more.