HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN THIS MONTH

Trick or drought!

If you live anywhere other than New York, you probably think we're all a bunch of libtard, kombucha-swilling activists continually griping about climate change. But believe me, we're actually bunch of libtard, kombucha-swilling phonies. Because all I've been hearing since the middle of August is, "Oh! I love this weather!" 

And who wouldn't love the perpetual sunshine, temperatures in the mid-70s, and rainfall that's been measured in the tenths of inches for three months? All we need is a colony of seals barking away at Battery Park and it would be like living in San Diego. 

Our idea of a
brush fire.

Folks like me who started getting emails with "red flag" warnings two months ago regarding low humidity and the occasional wind gusts leading to brush fires chuckled and shook our heads.  Brush fires? In Manhattan? The city that single-handedly keeps the cement industry alive?  

That was until two weeks ago when, upon waking up in the middle of the night, I smelled smoke in our apartment. Not wanting to die before receiving volume two of the restored Laurel & Hardy silent movies I shelled out 45 bucks for, I got up to inspect our living quarters, hoping to remember where we put our fire extinguisher.

The odor continued into the living room and kitchen. No sirens outside, though, or flames across the street. Shrugging it off as the smell of the heat rising through the pipes, I went to bed. By the morning, our domicile had returned to the fading aroma of the previous evening's dinner.

Only there really had been a fire. And yes, a brush fire, across the Hudson River in the Palisades of New Jersey, where an Easterly wind had blown smoke several miles into our neighborhood.

Those damn homeless encampments ruin
everything.

OK, so there was a brush fire -- a rather large one, admittedly -- in New Jersey, not New York. I'm not even sure what Palisades are, yet I know we don't have them here. But what we do have is Brooklyn, home of Prospect Park, where a brush fire, courtesy of a homeless encampment, started burning a few days later. This time, the wind blew West over the East River for another week or so. 

That was followed a few days later by a brush fire on 155th Street and the Harlem River in the Bronx. A brush fire -- in the Bronx? There's never a boring moment here. Why, just yesterday, New York was officially declared in a drought situation. 

Since the Jersey fire, there's hardly been a day when our Manhattan apartment hasn't smelled like a campsite. The inch of rain coming our way late tonight into tomorrow morning is expected to curb the brush fires at least temporarily. That's a good thing for the FDNY, but a shame for the rest of us who want the camping experience without leaving home.

And if you're wondering, the Laurel & Hardy restorations are worth the money. Those guys are funny as all get-out when they're not starting brush fires.

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