Andy Chase

The ungodly heat wave of the last five days here in the San Fernando Valley is not a “late summer” as I’ve heard people around calling it. It is hell on Earth.

In my five years here, I’ve noticed that there are three kinds of people:

• Those who were born in L.A. with nothing more than the vague notion that there are other states in the country further east than Nevada, and that in some of those states it rains for more than 3 days a year and sometimes it even *snows*.
• People who have moved to L.A. from one of the aforementioned states and have such a pathological aversion to said weather conditions that they’re willing to put up with this smog-ridden cesspit for the rest of their lives just to avoid a little bit of frozen precipiation.
• People who came to L.A. not knowing what to expect, or expecting something other than what they found, only to realize within the first few months that they hate this place with a burning passion.

Unfortunately, a lot of these last people (read: me) get stuck here a lot longer than they’d like. We are the people who find ourselves subjected to the reflexive response of “But the weather’s so nice here!” from the natives and willful transplants whenever we raise an objection of any kind to Los Angeles.

Well, I propose we take all those folks who like to tell people how nice the weather is and put them in a station wagon with the windows rolled up (You know, like some inept mother from Simi Valley) for a couple of hours and see how nice they think the weather is. Come to think of it, maybe they could just spend a couple of hours in my second floor apartment. Of course, upon exiting their first words would be “…but it’s a dry heat!”