Wax Museum

Madame Tussauds

"New York in August? It's like a great, big melting wax museum."
Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), Mad Men

Desperate Summer

Gantry Plaza spray pad

"A New York summer is frenetic, syncopated, blistered, frayed, dusty. There is a desperation in its heat, and a sense of letdown, despite relief, in its air-conditioned indoors."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

Summer is News

Coney Island

"In New York—fidgety, frittering, frenzied, boiling New York—summer itself is news."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

Cruel and Unusual

"August in New York is cruel and unusual punishment."
John Olson, Souls of Wind

Speedier New York

"There is nothing relaxed about the summer city. New York's noise is louder, New York's toughness is brasher, New York's velocity is speedier. Everything — stores, offices, schedules, vacations, traffic — demands full steam ahead."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

Sensuous Summer

Tompkins Square Park

"I love New York on summer afternoons when every one's away. There's something very sensuous about it — overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Midsummer Frolicking

Lasker Pool

"New York in July is out of synch, not quite itself, hoping for ransom, kidnapped by midsummer frolicking."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

Underworld

"New York City, in the summer, cannot be so different from hell. The smell of sweat mixed with the brine from the pickle barrels of vendors, the tight press of a hundred people who look right through you, the newsboys selling tragedy for a nickel, the fumes of the taxis rising like wraiths—this is an underworld, and anyone in it can point you toward an escape hatch."
Jodi Picoult, Second Glance