Air Conditioning
It is that time of year when New Orleanians start spending more time inside in air conditioning. Yesterday as I cycled on the levee there were very few others getting fit. It was hot but the partly cloudy sky kept the heat down a little. Having grown up in New Orleans without air conditioning I wondered how we survived the heat. Some will claim that it is hotter now than it used to be. Maybe it is, the one thing I notice is that we don’t get as many afternoon showers as we used to. I think it has more to do with conditioning yourself for the heat. Since I have been spending more time in the heat I find that it bothers me less. The A/C in the house set on 78 used to feel a little warm to me, now it feels cool to comfortable. As we get into the really hot part of the summer I think we will find that there are less and less people on the streets. There is a cultural effect to air conditioning in New Orleans, stoop and porch sitting in the evening seem to be a thing of the past.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
While I grew up in with air conditioning, I spent a number of years living without and learned to get along as people did for the prior several hundred years. I just turned my own AC down to 79 from it’s nighttime setting of 80 since my home office can get rather warm when I work at home (the fomer galley kitchen of the second side of the house).
We live on our porch. The best improvement we’ve made to the house was the porch fan, and only the absolute worst of weather drives us inside.
But then we’re not the norm anymore, are we?