Summer In The City: Far Away From The Neon Sky
Every time I think about the “idea” of summer in New York I hear an Eagles song. I’m thinking of the summer I spent living in Los Angeles, wishing I lived in New York. Okay, it was only a summer by school schedule standards; my alma mater Pepperdine University ends classes in late April, so I spent May and June and some of July daydreaming of the great glamorous East, where I would come into my own as an accidental bohemian genius (Pre-planned accidents are my specialty).
In the way that only Joe Walsh can, the song meanders while still feeling completely desperate, bleak and yet totally full of glorious, celebratory vigor. It is the epitome of summer, and, weirdly, it was written for the ultimate New York escapist movie, The Warriors (If you haven’t watched it, you must.) “In The City” originally appeared on that soundtrack in 1979 way before it was on any of their albums or a staple at Eagles concerts. This all serves to reaffirm my life-long assertion that Joe Walsh is the best Eagle–but I digress.
Now hitting the milestone of my fifth year as a New Yorker, I find myself dreaming of the beach in Los Angeles that I disdained for that long lonesome summer. Because the thing about summer is it’s a very lonely time, that’s why we so often fling ourselves into summer loves, search for trips to fill the long, hot void, or assume an alternate version of ourselves to occupy the humid space of those three months. We’re looking for a way out and summer reminds us just how very in we are–in our bodies, in these spaces and cities we’ve chosen to call home, in lockstep with the rest of the human race, who are also trying to catch a cool breeze, get a tan, and sip on something cold.
There is a certain wildness about summer that pushes us outward, back into the physical world and far away from, well, as Joe Walsh puts it, the neon sky. The season reminds us–summer is the real daydream, not the city you’re in. It reminds us that above all we are creatures of this planet and we are here to enjoy it. So here are five meditations on the way summer slithers in and out of our bodies and memories, how we build ritual into this golden period that always feels a bit like freedom and a bit like a prison. Specifically, these are love letters to spending summer in the city, in New York, where nothing grows and life ain’t very pretty. Because no matter how many times we threaten to leave, most of us will probably be here until hell freezes over.
Thomas Strickland: Come On In This House (Or Installing an Air Conditioner Is a New York Rite of Passage)


