7 hours ago
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Beating the heat seems like an impossible feat.
New Yorkers are desperately seeking refuge from the blistering heat scorching the Big Apple this week — and are desperately ducking into any store, shadow or corner that offers some relief.
Temperatures hovered around 100 degrees Tuesday, according to a thermometer toted around the city by The Post — but the real feel clocked in at an incredible 113 in some parts of the Big Apple.
The sweltering heat was enough to make even a butcher shop look like paradise — and its meat-filled freezers like a getaway.
“Best part about being a butcher on days like this, you want to cool off, you go in the freezer! Coldest place in the city,” Robert Giammarinaro, 64, the owner of Robert’s Butcher Shop in Bayside, told The Post.
The 39-year-old shop’s freezer was recording an icy 26 degrees — while The Post’s thermometer registered a jaw-dropping 121 degrees on the hot sidewalk outside.
The 35th Avenue shop also had three air conditioners running throughout the shop, otherwise “you’d die,” Giammarinaro said.
Luckily, he makes up for the financial damages the ACs cost on hot days — prepared foods like pastas, salads and meatloaf fly off the shelves on hot days because customers don’t want to have to stand over a hot stove themselves.
“It doesn’t bother me because I love New York. I love the weather in New York. I love the changing seasons. There’s no place better. I’ve been a lot of places, all over the world, but there’s no other place I would rather live and work than right here,” said Giammarinaro.
In Brooklyn, Mel Watkins and his daughter, 9-year-old Makenzi Brown, found refuge in a Cypress Hills Baskin-Robbins.
An ice cream parlor might seem like a more typical place to cool off — but the pair was met with a broken AC.
It was 75 degrees inside the shop, while outside teetered on 102.
“When I go outside, it feels like I’m going to have a heat stroke – that’s how hot it is. It’s cooler in here than it is outside. That’s all I care about,” little Makenzi said.
The pair was celebrating her fourth-grade graduation with milkshakes, which were making up for the lack of air conditioning.
“It’s 99 degrees out. We just came from her graduation and it was hot there, too – no AC. It’s crazy hot. It feels good to get out of the heat. I don’t like the heat – I’m like heat anemic. I get hot too quick. I’d rather drive under the AC all day in the car,” said Watkins, 35.
“We live only two blocks from here, but it’s cheaper to go get ice cream than run my own AC with Con Edison’s crazy pricing for electricity, and that’s even with solar panels on the roof. So we’re cooling off here instead.”
An ice cream shop in Little Neck, Queens had much better luck — as outside temperatures were reaching 115, according to The Post’s thermometer.
“Everyone who walks in stops and says ahhhhh! It’s so cool in here,” Ashley Chai, 18, who was slinging ice cream at the Horace Harding Expressway Carvel, said.
On her breaks, Chai has been racing to the walk-in freezer, which was set to 34 degrees, and “just standing there.”
“People are coming in and buying multiples of whatever they order. That last guy bought six six-packs of flying saucers,” added coworker Philicia Lin, 18.
Unfortunately, the insane heat coincided with Primary Day — and meant there was little relief for campaign workers on their final day.
Nasir Glover, 18, of Newark, spent the height of the day chasing down shadows outside the Queens Public Library at East Elmhurst as he doled out flyers for City Council hopeful Shanel Thomas Henry.
But even the shade provided little relief for the high school graduate, who was working a 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. shift for the insurgent candidate — The Post’s thermometer registered 107 degrees outside the library.
“This morning the sun was beaming! The only thing I could do was find shade. Shade and I needed some place to sit so I went back in and I grabbed a chair,” Glover told The Post.
“The first hour was terrible! But I hid in the shade and my body just kind of got used to it. I’m just chilling now enjoying the day and making $300. I’m going to hop right in a cold shower put my AC on Max and take a nap first thing when I get home!”
English (US)