Before Intel Chris’s boyfriend moved him into glorious Stuyvesant Town, where utilities are free and each room has its own built-in air conditioner, he lived in a one-room apartment in an old tenement on the Lower East Side. There were gates on the windows in the bedroom, which were meant to keep out potential robbers who could climb up the fire escape. It did a fine job of that, as far as I know, but it did nothing to keep out the noises of revelry and ralphing from Ludlow Street down below. It also prevented the installation of an air conditioning window unit. So Intel Chris’s boyfriend engineered a clever system of fans and doorways, such that air from the unit in the living room was directed around a corner and toward the bed.
In the past you readers have shared with us how the heat made you disgusting, how you manage to escape the hot weather, and even, just generally, how you stay alive in summer. Now we want to know: Who has the most elaborately jerry-rigged air conditioner, out of those of you that are lucky enough to have one this summer?
Note, not the kind of jerry-rigging that results in a unit falling out the window onto someone’s head (although we all now know that if this happens to you, you don’t necessarily die). I’m talking Rube Goldberg–type setups involving aerial engineering, advanced mathematics, and prayer.
Oh, and by the way, for those of you who do that thing where you use cardboard and tape to try to seal off the spaces around the unit, be careful: nymag.com video editor Sarah did that, and her apartment got broken into through her air conditioner. Just sayin’.
