Don’t Get an Air Conditioner! They’re a Total Scam and Are Ruining Everything.
Nostalgia
Everybody is super into nostalgia, right? That’s why those Buzzfeed lists about the 90s are so insanely popular, except, how many times can someone see a reference to EctoCoolers before getting a little sick of the redundancy? (Correct answer: Trick question. No one who cares about redundancy is spending much time looking at lists over on BuzzFeed.) Anyway, nostalgia. Don’t you ever wish you could live in a different time in New York? Maybe one where it was a common sight for kids to be dancing in the streets under the relentless spray of an illegally opened fire hydrant? One where you slept on your fire escape at night, in hopes of getting some kind of a night breeze? Well, try going without an air conditioner for a summer and you’ll see, life will be just like this great Arthur Miller essay that was in The New Yorker many years back, “Before Air Conditioning.” In it, Miller remembers, “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!” It was like the final joke before the meltdown of the world in a pool of sweat.” Which, I get that this might not be appealing to everyone, but there’s something romantic about suffering, isn’t there? I think so anyway. Just call me a romantic, I guess.
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