To A/C or not to A/C?

On Sunday, May 27, I blogged about the heat and my need for an AC:

"... Despite roughly four hours of sleep, I woke up early this morning in a puddle of sweat in the sauna that is my apartment and immediately decided that today will be the day that I make legitimate efforts toward finding an air conditioner and having it installed in the air conditioner box under my window.

As the back of my legs began to stick to the normally soft microsuede on my couch, I came across reruns of "Run's House" on MTV and noticed in one particular episode that DJ Rev Run's birthday party had been held in Tenjune recently.

"Oh, that's where we were last night," I thought to myself as I seriously debated whether or not to buy a lawn chair at the corner $.99 store and camp out in the frozen food section of the C Town across the street. I've had two cold showers in the last seven hours."

However, I have been dealing with this inner turmoil over the purchase of an air conditioner since I moved into my apartment last November. I knew when I moved from North Carolina into my best friend's living room in the Bronx during the hottest month in New York's recorded history (August 2006) that an air conditioner would be a necessity. I even had all those winter months of opportunity when air conditioners were cheaper.

Yet the same financial reasonings of a recent East Village Idiot blog post have had me in my own internal back-and-forth for months while my family and friends (who live in the South and don't understand housing without AC already included) regularly ask me, "Have you bought an AC yet?"

PLUS, I can only buy an AC that fits in the huge sleeve in my wall, which - though covered - is not insulated and let in the cold air all winter. My ONLY window won't accommodate one, which would ultimately block my view of Jimmy Hoffa's burial ground anyway (= Hudson River) and the only ACs that fit in sleeves at PC Richards currently cost more than another plane ticket to Miami.

And don't even get me started on how I'd get it home. Ever since I sold my car and became a card carrying member of the MTA, I've been stuck in that dark public-transportation abyss: if I can't carry it, I generally can't have it.

That abyss has kept me from making large purchases in New York that I would have easily made in the South without having to mull over the following options: 1) pay for delivery, 2) pay for a cab, but then figure out how to get it up to my apartment, 3) push, pull, heave, drag it - or a combination of (2) and (3) - all the way home.

And thus the question of a new New Yorker becomes: To be with AC or not to be with AC?