The same teacher who was the subject of my story Cello Class was also the woman who warned me one spring that there she would NOT be giving lessons over the summer because she refused to spend summers in New York City. Anyone here on a full time basis sees ample evidence of a mass exodus of many residents during the summer months, with benefits to those willing to stick it out. Restaurants that typically require reservations now have empty tables, streets now have readily available parking spots, tickets are available for shows normally sold out.

Of course, nothing comes without a price, and much as Vermont looks like paradise until one spends a winter there, New York City is quiet and easy during the summer for good reason. The relentless heat turns the city literally into a concrete jungle, now including steamy tropical weather, without any respite, save air-conditioned spaces.  Nearly everyone on foot finds themselves making pit stops in cool shops, many nearly vacant with unusually attentive salespeople who well understand your reason for visiting – after all, they are also likely thinking the same thing – why I am in New York City during the summer heat? In this jungle, one will not find fruit hanging from trees but instead will find the waste of such foods littering the streets, where walking becomes a slalom between shoppers and mountains of garbage. The season that so many love can be a living hell in New York. After all, the best thing about summer is being outdoors, the very thing near impossible to enjoy here most days here until evening, if that. There are no cool mountains to ascend and no refreshing ocean breezes.

Summer music festivals, which combine the joys of the season outdoors with musical performance, can be found throughout the world. We do have such in the parks of New York – Central Park’s Summer Stage, Prospect Park’s Celebrate Brooklyn, Washington Square Park Music Festival, Tompkins Square Park Police Riot Concert, among the larger. There are also many many other music festivals as there are street fairs, parades, and a plethora of activities. The problem is that a blistering day makes these all but intolerable, and years of attending these makes one realize that although, as I have heard many a New Yorker extol, there are perks of summer festivities here, nonetheless, the environment leaves much to be desired. The seasoned New Yorker who has spent too many summers here begins to ruminate on where one would have, could have, and should have been, like Tanglewood.

If you have been to an outdoor concert like Tanglewood in the Massachusetts Berkshire mountains, you know what I mean. Here, one can lie on a clean lawn with a candlelit picnic, perhaps with wine, while lying under a black sky popping with stars on a summer evening and the sounds of world-class musicians wafting over, accompanied by cool evening breezes. On the other hand, for many, the urban equivalent will be lying on the hard, filthy asphalt ground of a well-lit park, trying to listen to musicians who compete with others in a small space as well as deflecting crusties, the homeless, drug addicts, and miscreants of every persuasion. Fights occasionally break out between many of the disenfranchised, understandably frustrated by their lot in life, only exacerbated by the unabated summer heat and humidity which lingers all night. The occasional police vehicle arrives to settle the differences of those who would be pointless to arrest, while at other times, an ambulance arrive to collect the maimed who will only be repaired and released to replay the same violent scenarios at another time. Tanglewood Anyone?