Summer in Brooklyn

This weekend has the been the first nice one in NYC since that weird 70-degree Saturday in January. I know most people probably think summertime is the worst time to be in the city—so few out-of-doors spaces to enjoy the birds and the stars, and only a select few friends with barbeques to mooch off of.

But summertime is what I love most about Brooklyn, when everyone opens up their windows (except for the old people in my building who actually had on their ACs today), cranks up their stereos, and gets ready to start interacting with each other again. It doesn't matter if your neighbor is into smooth jazz, because you can just crank up the Bowie. And there is something fantastic about sitting in my apartment, hearing "you give me fever...when you touch me...fever all through the night" wafting over the barbed wire that surrounds my "back yard" (actually the gravel-covered roof of my building's parking garage, but I drag a lawn chair out the window and it's all mine).

Not only that, you begin to smell burgers, and curry, and smells so good you can't even imagine what they are—you only wish you knew who was producing them so you could be invited for dinner. Sounds of kids shrieking and power tools humming line the neighborhoods. I can hear the church bells clanging each hour more clearly, and the local mosque broadcasting its five daily prayers—an eerie, yet calming sound that always seems to become one with the wind.

So even though we can't go swimming in the lake and sit around bonfires in the summer, every April we come out of our small apartments and have our summers with strangers, whether they are the ones we see laughing through their open windows or the ones whose deck parties we hear over the noise of police sirens and the Mr. Softee song.

Happy Summer, New York, it's gonna be a good one.