Here we are, in the middle of August in Los Angeles, and I'm here to say: this is horrible.
You already knew that if you live in the valleys or anywhere north or east of downtown Los Angeles, those of us who do, well… see those forecasted August highs of, say, 86 degrees for “Los Angeles” (as if the city's 469 square miles excluded Van Nuys or Woodland Hills), reflexively add 10 or 15 degrees and quietly deal with our fear.
For those of you who live in areas cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes, try this: Drive a few miles inland, say “August,” and see what happens. Say it out loud and someone nearby might mumble “Ugh.” Say it in your head after spending the afternoon here and you’ll be the one muttering in disgust.
August in Los Angeles doesn't get the scorn it deserves. Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion made the Santa Ana winds familiar to everyone east of the Mississippi River, so much so that their undeserved mystique has lent itself to at least one Romantic comedy scene that makes you feel badone Funny musical number for television and without end literary doomsayer. And Mike Davis wrote the (current) book about extreme weather in Southern California.
But while those events often lead to wildfires, floods, and other calamities, they are low-key phenomena that usually ruin otherwise pleasant moments. When the warm winds die down and the storms subside, we return to our usual October-June perfection (provided a power line doesn't fail and Setting fire to the San Gabriel Mountains).
The same is not true of August, which promises terror for 31 days. Even the word, which begins and ends with similar vowel qualities, shows signs of monotony.
In July, with the remnants of June blues, you might say, “Hey, summer isn’t that bad.” But when August comes and the reality of endless heat day and night hits, you think, “We’re really going to do this.”
Let's say someone offers you free admission to Disneyland or a one-day game at Dodger Stadium in July or September. Great, but check the forecast first. But Disneyland or Dodger Stadium in the August sun? Death march.
Maybe I’m biased. Vin Scully died on August 2, 2022. A year later, my mother died. As a child growing up in Glendale, I vividly remember how the Verdugo Mountains would hide for much of August behind a curtain of smog, as if to add a stifling, claustrophobic quality to the threat of heat stroke.
Speaking of my mother, who probably dreaded the summer heat more than anyone, she once compared August to the final weeks of pregnancy. An OB-GYN nurse at Los Angeles General Medical Center (which will always be “County Hospital” to me) found a silver lining to the incessant discomforts and occasional complications of the ninth month: It may be the body’s way of making a person less afraid of childbirth.
So it was with August and for kids about to resume school, he once told me: The last full month of summer, on average the hottest in Los Angeles, had a way of making kids look forward to the promise of cooler days in September, when school started.
Now, we've ruined even that, by moving up the start of school in the worst month of the year. Before college, I'd never started school before Labor Day, but on Tuesday, not even halfway through August, my kids will begin their cruelly named “fall” in the Alhambra Unified School District. Los Angeles Unified School District kids will go back to school even earlier, on Monday.
Following my mother's example, perhaps there is a silver lining in all this: with younger generations being pushed back into classrooms at the hottest time of the year, the dearth of literary lamentations about August in Los Angeles may be over. After all, when they're writing their first writing assignments of the year and looking for inspiration, they might find it in their classrooms with poor air conditioning or in hot asphalt playgrounds no shade from the August sun. The next generation of Chandlers and Didions detest At this time of year.
