Stacy Kent
It's too darned hot.I'm hot. My neighbors are hot. My coworkers are hot. While playing softball in central park, I downed--and sweated out--more water than you could get out of a small swimming pool.
But the big problem is not that people are hot here in this city. It's that the city itself can't handle the heat.
Consider, if you will, the fact that two subway lines have stopped running, a third isn't running in Manhattan, and two more are only running a few local trains and no expresses--all because there isn't enough power for them. Houses and businesses in Queens are powerless, too. People are blaming ConEd, the local energy supplier. This is largely fair, in that they are in charge of powering the city--but it's unfair, too; Monday, New Yorkers set a new consumption record of 32,624 megawatts. We're running air conditioners at record rates, far above what our power grid can handle. Today, City Hall has dimmed its lights and upped the indoor temperatures in a bid to get others to do the same so that maybe, just maybe, normal city services can come back online.
Or consider that two days ago, a sixth train line was defunct. This was also because of power, in a way, but was decidedly not ConEd's problem. The third rail--which powers the trains--had buckled in the heat. Oops. No power along the line. Guess they weren't counting on days of 100+ degrees when they built the system.
Well, so New Yorkers can slow down a bit in the heat. It's not the end of the world. Washington, DC, shuts down when it snows. Why don't we get days off when it's hot?
posted by Skay @ 10:32 PM
8 Comments:
Hey, it could be worse: remember a few years ago when tens of thousands of people were dying of the "heat wave" in France? I put "heat wave" in scare quotes because the temperature was running in the low 90s...a completely normal summer day in Jacksonville, FL. All of this supports my theory that Europeans don't drink nearly enough water.
Remember the part where Jacksonville is getting cooler themperatures than NYC and South Dakota?
I think I missed that part.
I'll give you South Dakota, though. That's some seriously hot weather.
Still, I was complaining about the French, not New Yorkers or South Dakotans, who seem to go about their business just fine when it's hot.
I like the actual data for a change, Donovan.
That's some amazing weather in S.D.
40 years ago in NYC you could get a permit to turn on a fire hydrant on your block to play in. Still true?
You don't need a permit anymore, Dolf. What you do need, though, is a special spray nozzle that you can only get from the fire department (meaning, as a result, that they do de facto know how many open hydrants there are).
Further update on the heat: the police are now going around giving around ice water; city hall, the Empire State building, and the Chrystler building are all unlit for now to conserve power for A/C; Riker's island and all our sanitation plants are running on generators.
Why is this post titled Stacy Kent? I don't get it.
Stacy Kent's first(?) CD featured a brilliant rendition of the song "It's Too Darned Hot," Crag.
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