The summer that just began is, inexplicably, my 21st living in New York City and soaking up the pure joy that this season brings to the Northeast. Back in 2003, near the end of my first, a group of friends and I drove out to the
Catskills, found a random trailhead, and staggered into the woods in the twilight under the weight of the gear we’d purchased at Kmart. After going half a mile or so up the hill we identified a clearing a few hundred yards off the trail and set up camp there. Somehow we got a fire going and wolfed down undercooked burgers. We were passing around a bottle of whiskey afterward when the air above the tree canopy was suddenly filled with thunderous noise and bright lights. We all thought it was World War III (remember, this wasn’t so long after 9/11), until we finally realized that it was just a Labor Day fireworks display at a nearby high school. Later, one of my friends whacked another on the head with his shoe when he drunkenly tried to climb into the wrong tent; in the morning we awoke to find that the tent had collapsed on top of him
I’ve gotten better at doing summer in the Northeast since then. But though I’ve had so many fun and memorable summer trips over the many years since—to actual campgrounds, friends’ (and friends-of-friends’) houses, rentals and Airbnbs, motor lodges, spa hotels, luxe resorts—until recently, I remained convinced, as so many native Californians are, of the innate superiority of everything on the West Coast to the rest of the country, including summer. And look, I’m not going to lie, it’s taken me till these last few years after the onset of the pandemic, driving around upstate New York and New England with my kids, to finally get it, really and truly: When it comes to summer, nothing beats the Northeast—not even the West.
For one thing, unlike in California and so many other parts of the country, it’s an actual season here, one that more closely matches the unofficial Memorial Day-to-Labor Day definition of summer than just about anywhere else in America. You feel summer’s approach as the spring days get longer, as the countdown to the last day of school gets shorter, as everyone starts showing a little more skin. And then suddenly it arrives, and from the
Jersey Shore to the Poconos, from the Adirondacks to the Delaware Water Gap, from
Western Mass to
Midcoast Maine, everyone gets swept up in the elation of the season and surrenders to its rituals. Even when the thunderstorms roll in, even when you’re swatting away mosquitoes, even when it’s so muggy you want to shower five times a day, you still never want the season to end.
For me, summer really comes when the summer foods come. The season has become irrevocably wrapped up in the smell and taste of Jersey-grown basil and fresh corn and Brandywine tomatoes. The snap peas and asparagus show up around the same time, and so do the watermelon and strawberries and stone fruit. The flavor of summer is also in the Original Tomato Pie—nothing more than crushed fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, Pecorino, garlic, and olive oil—cut into three-bite squares at the original Frank Pepe in New Haven, Connecticut, where I always insist we stop when driving home from Vermont. It’s in the slightly-gross-but-sooooo-delicious fried clam strips at Johnny’s Reef on City Island—one of those places you go on a beautiful summer day in New York City when you can’t get out of town. It’s in the small, bright, briny Atlantic oysters, paired with a glass of ice-cold rose, anywhere you can find them—including at Island Oyster on Governors Island, a fancier place to leave town in the summer without leaving town. It’s in gorgeous seasonal produce simply utilized at scores of unassumingly excellent restaurants, from Gaskin’s in Germantown, New York, to the dining room at Nebo Lodge on North Haven Island, Maine, a short ferry ride from Rockland.
during the summer way too hot 
Nice and balanced weather 
