Joining the 100-degree club

By Joe Brown

Monday, May 19, 2008 | 5:01 p.m.

I've lived here nearly five months, and I've finally reached my rite of passage, my inititiation. Laugh if you want to, Las Vegans (what do we call ourselves?), but crossing the 100 degree mark is a big deal for me, physically and psychologically.

I moved here from the San Francisco Bay area, where people freak out and actually melt down if it goes much over 82 degrees (reportedly they hit 100 degrees last week). I'd rather break 100 here, where we have near-universal air conditioning and no humidity).

Since New Years Eve I've been fretting frequently about this very day, and many of you, the drugstore clerks and retail personnel of Las Vegas, have been kind and wry and indulgent as you listened to my fears. Now, at last, I stand among you.

Well, actually, I hide among you.

Yesterday, Saturday morning, I made the rounds of the strip malls (as one does in these here parts), stockpiling pasta salads, magazines -- and a mini-refrigerator for the second floor of my rented condo. This morning, I did laundry early, closed the shades and curtains, draped white sheets over the potentially-sweaty leather TV-watching chair and daybed, and adjusted the thermostat. I made sangria (with real fruit!). I turned on the ceiling fan, and made an iPod playlist of ultra-minimal ambient music -- the chilled sound of synth whispers, no pulse-raising beats, please.

I'm not denying thermal reality: Soon after the temperature rose four degrees (within a 30-minute period) to 102 degrees, I popped outside in my white t-shirt and boxers and stood on the pavement, "embracing the heat" (as my editor advised me to do yesterday). I stayed on that concrete for nearly 30 seconds (till my t-shirt started getting crispy) before retreating to my cool, dark condo-cave.

I look forward to embracing the heat again tomorrow (109 degrees! Yay!) when I dash from the car to the lobby of the Las Vegas Sun building. Depending on where I find parking, that may build my record up to 60 seconds or so.

I look forward to chuckling knowingly when newcomers to Las Vegas confide their worries about surviving a Las Vegas summer. That's about a year from now.

Till then, any advice, tips or brow-cooling perspective from you veterans of Las Vegas summer heat? Please feel free to share in the comments. (Yeah, you have to register first, but what else do you have to do today?) We're all in this together, right?