It is a hot day. The citizens of the biggest city in the world suffer with the heat-jitters. In tenement windows tired wives rest their stout elbows on pillows and stare blankly at the raucous elevated trains. High-priced blossoms in the show-windows of Fifth Avenue florists are shriveled. Subway guards, sweating in their heavy blue coats, mutter surly curses and push people into the hot carts. It takes ten beers to quench one’s thirst. The damn, insistent heat has placed blue lines beneath the eyes of subway passengers. The flags on the sky scrapers are slack; there is no breeze. Drowsy citizens stand in wet garments beneath the most popular thermometer in town- the giant in front of the Pulitzer Building on Park Row - and watch, fascinated, while the mercury climbs inexorably into the nineties. The asphalt in the streets is so soft that heels leave their marks in it. When two people meet one is almost certain to inquire, inanely, “Is it hot enough for you?” Summer has the city in a stranglehold. - The Biggest City in the World by Joseph Mitchell
Pop-upView Separately

It is a hot day. The citizens of the biggest city in the world suffer with the heat-jitters. In tenement windows tired wives rest their stout elbows on pillows and stare blankly at the raucous elevated trains. High-priced blossoms in the show-windows of Fifth Avenue florists are shriveled. Subway guards, sweating in their heavy blue coats, mutter surly curses and push people into the hot carts. It takes ten beers to quench one’s thirst. The damn, insistent heat has placed blue lines beneath the eyes of subway passengers. The flags on the sky scrapers are slack; there is no breeze. Drowsy citizens stand in wet garments beneath the most popular thermometer in town- the giant in front of the Pulitzer Building on Park Row - and watch, fascinated, while the mercury climbs inexorably into the nineties. The asphalt in the streets is so soft that heels leave their marks in it. When two people meet one is almost certain to inquire, inanely, “Is it hot enough for you?” Summer has the city in a stranglehold.

- The Biggest City in the World by Joseph Mitchell

4 Notes/ Hide

  1. brieflynoted posted this