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2nd Straight Day of Record-Breaking Heat Today!
By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 7, 2010
Modified Jul 7, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 7, 2010
Modified Jul 7, 2010
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Today we've beatenendured the record high temperature set for Central Park on July 7th. A little after 1:30 p.m., the mercury rose to 99 degrees, besting the old record of 98 set in 1993. Listless low-five! It's stinking hot out there—literally, folks! The heat and trash still lingering from the long weekend is making this dirty town reek. As one Bed-Stuy resident put it to the Times, parts of this city smell "like cat or dog feces mixed with food that been there for weeks or something." Or as one Crotona Park father recounted, "My kids were crying, 'What’s that smell, Daddy? It smells like a rat that’s dead.' I said, 'No, mami, it’s not a rat, it’s the garbage.' "
This morning almost 2,000 customers were still without juice on Staten Island; at this point Con Ed says all but 265 have the juice back. 1,566 customers are currently out of power in Brooklyn, 434 in Queens, 70 in the Bronx, and 9 in Manhattan. In New Jersey, the state is on the verge of drought, and officials are calling on citizens to conserve water. "It's really something that's getting a little worrisome," state climatologist David Robinson tells Eyewitness 7. "The reservoirs will start really falling, rivers will start falling. Soil moisture is really low." It got so hot yesterday that two New Jersey drawbridges got stuck when the heat made their steel components expand!
Over in Central Park, actors performing in the free Shakespeare series are behaving like real troupers, including 70-year-old Al Pacino. After last night's performance in The Merchant of Venice, Pacino nonchalantly boasted, "The show was great." (His balls probably felt like cement, too.) But former "Law & Order" star Jesse L. Martin, who plays Gratiano, was a little more human, telling the Post, "It's no party, I can tell you that. It feels like exercising in a microwave. The show must go on, but whew!" And as the crew ran around backstage spraying actors' sweat-stained microphones with compressed air to keep them dry, one Joan Rivers sat in the audience perfectly content, declaring, "I would sit in an oven for Al Pacino."
Tagged
con ed
con edison
drought
july 2010 heat wave
july 7th
record
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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