Summer in the City

This weekend was the first hot weekend of the year, two days in a row so sweltering that I finally can relate to that episode of Sex & the City where Carrie dates a guy just because he has air conditioning. When it's this hot, long subway rides are something to relish - they cool the cars veery well, but then you step out in the station and everything melts. Whatever you've spent 30 or 40 minutes doing to your hair or makeup is undone in minutes as you wait for the train. 

I don't actually mind the heat that much, though. Emerging from a cold subway car, it feels like a blanket, humid air wrapping around me to offer comfort. I know that when the humidity reaches 90 percent, like it did today, I will regret my cavalier attitude here - but I don't really mind the heat. 

The travails of heat and humidity were made easier by the fact that I didn't sleep at home either night this weekend. No, I didn't pull a Carrie and go home with some cutie to his parents' Park Avenue Penthouse, instead I spent both nights I was at my (begrudging) home away from home, Brooklyn. First at Caitlin's on Friday night after she threw a party for a friend that was in town, and then last night at Adam Rio's, in Williamsburg, on his couch, directly in front of his air conditioner. Yum. I slept in my dress and used a couch cushion as a blanket, as I actually got a little bit cold. I hadn't planned to sleep there, but Sabra and Aaron (Austinites who are visiting) were going there, and it was the easiest thing to do at 4 in the morning.

Adam has a great place and is getting a really good deal on it. It's a long, narrow, railroad layout, but it's big - probably about 600 or 700 square feet. That's big for being all his in New York. It's in a fairly lively area, only two blocks from the subway. He has the walls painted, and it has new appliances and it's very cozy. It's rent-stabilized, so he won't have to leave because his landlord raises rent by $400 to renew. That happens a lot here, but if  place is rent-stabilized landlords can only raise by a certain amount - 4 percent or something, which is perfectly fair.

We had all gone out to a gay bar in the Lower East Side - Cake Shop - to see some friends of Adam's and catch a show and take advantage of the open bar from 10-11. We each had about four drinks, but luckily they were small, and the show was great, too. A couple of bands, and the second one was really fun and campy. Adam and I went up front and danced. 

Then we headed to Bar 151, just off Essex and right by my friend brad's place. I liked that place, too, and am glad I asked Adam the name of it. There are so many places to go here that it's easy to visit spots and not know their names and that makes me feel like I'm not learning the city.

Then Caitlin came over in the early afternoon and we worked for about three hours organizing my room and building more of my IKEA stuff. It was unbearable in the apartment and poor Caitlin got overheated and her back started to hurt from bending over building things. So we left the rest of it for later and hopped a subway to Coney Island to meet up with some of Caitlin's friends - Moe, Mary and Gael.

Coney Island is a spectacle. It's a carnival atmosphere, spilling over with people - people who are not exactly the classiest sorts you've ever met. The beach is littered with garbage -despite there being (overflowing) garbage cans every 15 feet, and you shouldn't walk barefoot because there's likely broken glass. It's mad and deliciously lowbrow and I liked it, but more for the spectacle than anything else. We rode the Wonder Wheel, a ferris wheel with cars that pitch and swing. I hadn't realized the cars did that and nearly had a fit when we started swinging but then I calmed down and got used to it and wanted more when it was over.