The Heat Is On

In the prior reprise—a blast from the past—I recount navigating my way home from high school after a final exam. Perhaps even the final final—a New York State Regents Algebra exam—of my freshman year. I remembered it was a hazy, hot, and humid mid-June afternoon. The air quality was extremely poor and the sky a greenish-yellow overcast. On the last leg of my journey, I spied a flash of heat lightning—no thunder accompaniment  lightning—on the distant horizon beyond the High Pumping Station off Jerome Avenue. As Bronx architecture goes, this building is rather distinct. Built at the turn of the twentieth century—as an appendage of the Jerome Park Reservoir system—it is listed on, of all places, the National Register of Historic Places. With its red bricks and precipitously steep and slate-covered gable roof, which is not too common in the area, the High Pumping Station has always been an eye-catcher. Anyway, that was a memory blip from a June day forty-four years ago. In that momentary snapshot in time the heat lightning served as a welcome beacon, a portent of better things to come—for a couple of months at least.

Fast forward to the present and the heat is on once more. However, I’m not banking on any of Mother Nature’s natural phenomena—signs from the heavens—lighting the way for the coming summer season. Instead, New York City voters, including yours truly, cast ballots in the first consequential election with ranked-choice voting. I had forgotten that we the people said yay to ranked-choice voting by a margin of three-to-one in 2019. Honestly, I don’t think very many of us considered the potential consequences of this new way of electing office holders. While it makes sense in a lot of ways, leave it to the city’s Board of Elections to royally screw things up. With so many men and women on both the left and right believing our elections are corrupted nowadays, this is awfully bad timing. Apparently, the Board of Elections counted 135,000 test ballots in the first round of ranked-choice tabulations, which skewed the results. The bureaucratic tangle of an agency has since announced a do-over.

Riddle me this: If frontrunner Eric Adams, who was up by ten points in the actual tally on election night, somehow loses this substantial lead in the ranked-choice tabulations, will it be accepted as absolutely aboveboard? Adams got a plurality of votes in four of the city’s five boroughs. Only Manhattan demurred, giving “Defund the Police” Maya Wiley the most votes. Her core support was in the more upscale white neighborhoods. From voters who love to talk the woke talk from their door-manned buildings, their vacation homes in the Hamptons, and while consuming lobster gazpacho, chicken tikka basmati rice, and nori seaweed tots in trendy, hipster restaurants. Just sayin’.

While on the subject of just sayin’: There are more cars on the streets than ever before. Traffic time never takes a holiday. It’s not just the rush hours and the Friday evening exoduses anymore. Add to this mayhem countless variations of motor bikes, mopeds, and illegal ATVs. Traversing the highways and byways is a nightmare night and day. Crime is also spiraling out of control and it’s hot as hell on top of that. Looking on the bright side: It’s not as toasty as in the Pacific Northwest with its heat dome plus climate change one-two punch wreaking havoc on the animate and inanimate alike.

So, yes, while the talk the talkers will throw their full support behind things like the Green New Deal—without fretting over the fine print or even reading the fine print—are they willing to make any personal sacrifices, adjustments to their lifestyles? Sitting amidst an all-too-typical traffic jam—with my taxi driver alerting me that his outdoor thermometer reading is one hundred degrees—I think I know the answer to that question.