By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK, July 2 (Reuters) – New York City seems to have it all, at least for this weekend: a dizzying heatwave, a rumored celebrity wedding, scrums of soccer fans and sailors on shore leave, a political debate about air conditioning, sharks in the water, and a grand fireworks display for the nation’s 250th birthday.
The weather forecast for this convergence is daunting. By Thursday morning, it had already crossed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the National Weather Service warned of dangerous heat and humidity through to the Independence Day holiday on July 4.
The service urged New Yorkers to watch out for sudden severe thunderstorms through to Saturday evening, too — unwelcome news for Macy’s department store as it prepares for its 50th year of coloring the skyline with Independence Day fireworks, launched from the Brooklyn Bridge, the East River and the Hudson River.
“These temperatures are extraordinary temperatures,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference before teasingly nodding to reports that musician Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce would wed at Manhattan’s biggest arena: “And if you happen to be getting married at Madison Square Garden, you will be staying inside and you will be staying cool, and I think it’s a good example to set for the city at large.”
The weekend arrives with the city already in unusually high spirits, buoyed by its basketball team, the New York Knicks, winning their first NBA Championship in 53 years last month. New Yorkers found themselves hugging strangers, clambering up lampposts to cheer, and losing themselves at a triumphant ticker-tape parade up Broadway to honor the city’s latest heroes.
And while New York has always been a basketball and baseball town, Knicks fever has since been augmented by soccer madness with a FIFA World Cup venue just over the Hudson in New Jersey hosting eight games, including Norway against Brazil on Sunday.
‘WELCOME TO NEW YORK, IT’S BEEN WAITING FOR YOU’
Another match seems almost certain for Madison Square Garden on Friday evening, where celebrity super-couple Swift and Kelce have invited about a thousand of their closest friends for their long-rumored wedding, according to dogged local media reports. Workers were stacking barricades around the arena on Thursday as police enact a permit of vague purpose to close down surrounding streets until Saturday, the New York Times has reported.
In short, it was ideal timing to be a sailor on shore leave, with the U.S. Navy rescheduling its much-romanticized New York Fleet Week this year from its usual May slot. Sailors and Marines in pressed dress uniforms were amassing in Times Square on Thursday afternoon ahead of a planned photoshoot, which happens to coincide with a planned “banderazo” flag-waving celebration by a crowd of Argentina soccer fans excited for the match against Cape Verde on Friday.
For some New Yorkers, it was just another dog day afternoon of work. UPS delivery driver Leroy Johnson pushed around a cart of Amazon packages, his brown uniform dampening.
“The truck has no air conditioning, so you got to leave the doors open,” he said.
Thinking of people like Johnson, Ali Dogal left two crates filled with ice-bathed plastic bottles of water outside his restaurant, midtown’s Ali Baba Mediterranean & Turkish Cuisine.
How else to stay cool? Six months in as the city’s love-him-or-hate-him mayor, Mamdani, a socialist and a Democrat, recirculated the city’s long-standing, pro-forma advice to set air conditioners at 78 F (26 C) so as not to overload the electricity grid. Immediately, a debate set social media ablaze, with some saying an air conditioner set that high is un-American, perhaps even communist.
At least two prominent Republican politicians shared their scorn.
“Welcome to socialism,” Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador, wrote in response to Mamdani’s message, despite having herself urged energy conservation during extreme weather when she served as South Carolina’s governor.
“In a first-world country, you could turn on the A/C,” wrote Senator Ted Cruz of Republican-led Texas in a post that prompted others to reply with links to Texas utilities and officials also settling on the same recommended setting as the mayor: 78 F.
Mamdani also touted the opening weekend for the city’s outdoor public pools by jumping into one of them in full suit and tie. The city’s many Atlantic beaches are open, too, though officials said to be mindful before heading to Rockaway Beach in Queens: sharks have also been seen arriving in town for the weekend.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Ed Ou, Joseph Ax and Maria Tsvetkova; editing by Paul Thomasch and Rosalba O’Brien)
Comments