You might as well be walkin’ on the sun…

If I had to pick a least favorite season living in DC it would have to be Summer. I know like half the people who just read this are saying, “Oh why? I love summer – summer is the best” etc. Yeah well, you’re wrong. Most people are smart enough to get away from DC when the summer heat waves start to hit and actually go to the beach or on vacation to escape what can only be described as God doing his best impression of that kid that lives 2 blocks from your house that is always putting his G.I. Joes into the microwave and hitting “de-frost”… news flash DC – we are God’s action figures.

Alas, I never saw Rome…

Also, when you hear people say things like, “Oh INSERT STATE HERE is not so bad because it is a dry heat” – well you know what the opposite of that is? You guessed it, D.C.  in the summer. If Hell has a swamp, I guarantee it looks like the alley behind Murray’s Market on 5th street and feels about the same too. You know you are in D.C. in July when the act of breathing is torturous enough to make you believe that the city is literally trying to kill you, like you are in a scene from The Happening – except less Mark Wahlberg and no real planet life that has not already be scorched by the unyielding sunlight.

 

It is too hot for baseball - FUCKING POOL DAY - Benny!

 Not that there are not tons of really fun things to do in DC during the summer, because there really are – the only downside is that everything you hate about the city has also received a powerful upgrade – the smell of hot. Now some of you, have no idea what the smell of hot is and are probably mistaking it with the smell of sweat or the smell of the outdoors – and that is not what I am taking about. I am talking about the actual smell of a ridiculously hot temperature attempting to burn the clothes off your body. That is the smell. In small doses, this is tolerable – but when an entire city has been blanketed in it – the effects are catastrophic. For example, you like to walk a couple blocks to your favorite Chinese food place for lunch? No problem, if you do not mind running a gauntlet of overheated bums that now smell like a 5 gallon drum of fish heads that were left out in the African sun for two weeks and then covered in despair. Or, if  by some miracle you actually survive heat stroke, the homeless, and dehydration and make it to the restaurant (and don’t worry – you won’t) the normally slightly offensive smell of back alley garbage in the dumpster has used the oppressive heat to turn itself into what can only be compared to the VX gas chambered in “The Rock” after “Butter-Fingers” drops one of the super poisonous orbs whose handling instructions read like a line from a Samuel L. Jackson movie, “DON’T FUCKING DROP ME”.

 

"We'll never make it sir!" - "I need lunch special 4 with fried rice and I am NOT coming back without it!"

Not only that, but an already painful commute has turned into the Trail of Tears – whether you take the metro or drive into work you might as well be on a forced march with nothing more than a small pox laced blanket and a Smart Trip card.  Even simple breathing, feels like you have wrapped your lips around a hair dryer set on “FUCK YOURSELF”. It is almost too hot to survive.

"Oh god please! I just have to get to work - STOP!"

 All those times I had conversations with people in college, and they kept telling me how they were going to be teachers and I kept telling them how stupid that was – well, the joke is on me because as I walk through the city of broken dreams and A.C. units in a full suit feeling like a toddler strapped into a car seat of a 1988 Toyota minivan with all the windows rolled up – they are on vacation. Damn you irony.

Behold my tomb.

 The only things seemingly unaffected by the heat are the tourists, who despite the Sahara-like conditions seem to flock to this summer-time hell hole in droves walking around in their giant hats and Hawaiian print shirts stopping only long enough to back up an escalator on the metro or take a 45 minute long video of their kids making faces and flashing peace signs or reenact a Sports Illustrated photo shoot right in front of your office building door and the only place within 4 blocks where you can get some damn AC.

"Show me sexy..."

On my walk to work today from the metro, 4 people spontaneously combusted. There is no joke there, that is real talk. Like little q-tips coated in napalm. So if you have the chance, jump the first thing smoking that is heading somewhere with a beach or at least a pool with a ban on children and get out of here. The rest of us – are not going to make it.

 

Google Street View: 2000 Pennsylvania Ave NW