New York City Life Hot enough for you? By Bob Yampolsky	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
不快なニューヨークの夏 「この街は全米一汚く、住民は柄が悪くて…」とこぼしつつ、実はそれが自慢のニューヨーカー。だが、このところ街が安全になった上、ニューヨークが統計的に割り出した「住民が最も汗をかく都市」の10位にも入っていないことが最近判明し、大ショック…。

New York's had a rough time since nine-eleven; it's been one blow after another. First the Yankees lost the World Series in heartbreaking fashion. In basketball, which is New York's hometown sport, the Knicks collapsed and the New Jersey Nets — from the suburbs, for God's sake — become the top local team. There's the huge budget deficit, the bursting of the Wall Street bubble and now this: The announcement that New York is not the sweatiest city in the nation.

Not even that, but we didn't even crack the top 10.

New Yorkers have long prided themselves on the fact that they live in an environment that most sane people would not put up with. New York was the dirtiest, rudest, most dangerous, most expensive, most what have you; the Big Leagues, in other words, and everyone living anywhere else was just playing in the minors. You had to be tough to survive in New York; as the Frank Sinatra song goes, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere."

But in New York's rebirth over the past decade or so, we have lost many of the old distinctions. No longer are we tops in crime and dirt and lousy public transportation; and no longer are we completely uncivil: Yesterday a taxi driver, the ancient symbol of New York rudeness, called me "Sir." What is this city coming to? But at least, through it all, we've been able to complain about the weather: the slush of the winter and the stifling summers. "It's not the heat," goes a famous New York cliche, "but the humidity."

But our humidity, it turns out, is bush league compared to the cities of the south. And I will grant, it pales in comparison to Japanese cities. Even so, it should be remembered that our humidity acts in conjunction with all the myriad other irritants and incivilities and outrages that go with living in New York, and that makes it feel all the more intense.

In our apartment, we pull the shades and windows down against the heat. The walls are thick, and the rooms stay cool. We have air-conditioning only in the kids' bedroom, which does not have a cross-breeze. On really hot nights, things can get sticky. A couple of times already this month my wife has given up and gone into the kids' room to sleep. I stick it out, open the windows wide, and lay in bed in a sweat. At 3 a.m. the trash collectors make their rounds, and at 5:45 a.m. trucks begin arriving at the construction site a half-block away. I can hear their backing-up warning signals loud and clear.

A typical July day in New York is hot, hazy and humid. It starts out steamy in the morning and keeps getting hotter. Through the afternoon the temperature pushes into the 90s. If we're lucky, we get a thunderstorm. After a storm clears, we usually have a day or two of nicer weather.

In the mornings the subway stations haven't heated up yet and are tolerable, but in the evening they feel like ovens. Ever since nine-eleven, subway service has been erratic. Now, erratic can be good and bad. It's bad when you find yourself waiting forever in an airless station, but it is good when you have just missed your train, and have resigned yourself to waiting, when, lo and behold, another train follows. However, I have learned this summer that erratic is more bad than good.

Unlike the stations, the trains themselves are air-conditioned. Ninety-five percent of the cars have working air-conditioning, the Metropolitan Transport Authority boasts. Put another way, it means that 5 percent, or one in 20 cars does not have working AC — that is, one car in every two trains has broken AC. If you, as you're about to board a subway, see a car that alone is suspiciously empty, you know that it is empty because the AC's broken.

One thing that stands out this summer is how many people walk around carrying bottles of water. Backpacks have special pockets for water bottles, and strollers have holders built into the handles. But most of all, people walk around carrying massive bottles of the stuff. The brand of choice in New York — or rather, the dominant brand — is called Poland Spring. It's sold everywhere. It comes from the state of Maine, which I can't imagine has very much water left.

The prices are outrageous: in the parks, $1.50 (¥177) for a slightly chilled half-liter. You're paying for the chilling; you can buy the same item, unchilled, for a fifth of the price. At delis a 0.75 L bottle sells for $2 (¥236) and up. At Yankee Stadium, they go for $4 (¥372). At intersections in Harlem, where squeegee men used to wash car windows for quarters, folks on hot days now sell bottles of Poland Spring for $2.50 (¥295) a pop.

The other day a couple of guys delivered some heavy stuff to my office. I tipped them five bucks and a cold bottle of water each. It was the water that made them smile.

I think most New Yorkers are ready to concede that our heat and humidity probably does pale in comparison to the likes of San Antonio and New Orleans (No. 1 and 2 in sweatiness). Still, it's plenty hot for us. This is what we say these days, instead of "Goodbye": "Keep cool."

Shukan ST: Aug. 2, 2002

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