By this time each year, DJ Jazzy Jeff and I have usually gotten reacquainted.  Since Jazzy and Fresh Prince released THE BEST SONG EVER, ‘Summertime,’ it has been, well, my summer jam.  In 1991 when the song first came out I would crank up my Walkman and Rollerblade up and down the street, feeling really cool.  As a teenager, when the song came on the radio I would crank it up as I drove my blue Chevy Cavalier station wagon around town, feeling really cool.  Today, I’m old enough to know I was not, am not, and will never be ‘really cool’, but I still crank the song up every time I hear that soft subtle mix.  This year, I’m still waiting for that opportunity.

It’s been raining here in New York for days on end.  And I know that sounds like an exaggeration.  Whenever there’s more than a few days of rain people immediately start saying things like, ‘God, I can’t even remember what the sun looks like!’  But seriously, people, the weather gurus proved it.  Of 21 days in June to date, it has rained for 17.

I thought I was one of a small group of people who get really affected by poor weather. But rain?  It seems to get us all down.  I’ve overheard a lot of people saying things like, ‘I can’t take this rain anymore!’  I have yet to hear someone say ‘Boy am I glad how green the trees are, thanks to all this rain!’

The thing is, in the Northeast, we wait about six months every year for sunshine and warm weather to return after what always feels like an endless winter.  In New York we eagerly count down to the day when restaurants finally slide back their big glass windows, throw some patio chairs on the sidewalk, and let us linger next to the hulking garbage trucks, dirty pigeons, and off-their-meds crazy people.  We can’t wait for this! To be one with nature!  To sip mimosas on a leisurely Sunday while we chow down on stuffed French toast, chomping away while a deranged person with Tourette’s syndrome walks by punching herself in the head and screaming ‘FUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS! THE SHIT!!’ so close to you that her spittle lands among the powdered sugar sprinkled atop your plate.  It’s downright serene.  And it can only happen in summer.

And yet.  The rain.  In just two weeks it’ll be July.  We’ve already been cheated out of some of the year’s best days.  Does Mother Nature plan to issue a real ‘rain check’ and make up for her transgressions by extending summer a month into fall?  I should hope so.  In the meantime, I’m gonna think of the summers of the past, adjust the base and let the alpine blast.

(9ecni4wt7d)

Tags: New York City life, summer

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