Hold your windbreaker-wearing horses, everyone: Summer ain’t over yet. It’s not even Labor Day, and honestly, it feels like we’re just getting hit with the 90-degree temperatures the summer has been storing up all season — and we’ll likely have some sweltering days to come in September (thank you, climate change!).
And yet, summer-haters exist out there, the ones who would shuffle the season off the calendar like an ear-splittingly awful “America’s Got Talent” contestant. They are the purveyors of pumpkin beers, pumpkin lattes and all things fall, which are making unwarranted incursions into August with no regard for traditional seasonal boundaries.
This is why I was shocked earlier this week as I rode my bike to an assignment through the thick, long-overdue dog days of summer heat out in East Williamsburg. After the interview, I escaped the sticky night air by slipping into Pine Box Rock Shop, a go-to local beer bar, and when searching for a refreshing beverage, my eyes fell upon . . . a pumpkin beer?
Yes, pumpkin beers are already on menus and shelves across the city. Beer-centric watering hole D.B.A. in Williamsburg added one to its menu already, and beer shop Bierkraft in Park Slope has pumpkin ale with jack o’ lanterns on the label on its shelves. Some of them have even been there since July. Lots of other beer industry watchers have sputtered angrily into their wheat beers over this seasonal creep, too.
This is, undeniably, not pumpkin-beer weather: Pumpkin beer is meant to be poured over the chill of pure fall — flannels and long jeans, crisp nights on the roof watching the increasingly early sunset, the thing to sip when the city is abuzz with talk of Halloween and harvests. That rich pumpkin flavor tastes like sensibility: a return to academic reason that matches the start of the school year, a stark contrast to the light, fruit-infused flavors of a crisp summer ale.
But pumpkin beer is far from the only culprit. Seasonal creep is happening with Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte, that very iconic arbiter of the autumn, which was made available Aug. 26 in some places including New York, a full week earlier than usual.
Then, on the way back from Rockaway on Saturday, I spotted another creep in action: The signs for our local pop-up Halloween shop on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn were already haunting the windows.
Who are ye summer traitors who are so eager for fall, when August still holds us in its warm embrace?
I know there are summer haters out there, those who can’t wait to catapult past the best months of the year and rush into the chilly embrace of sweater weather. And truth be told, I’m not on the antifall brigade at all. One could argue autumn is, in fact, the season when New York is truly at its finest, when the vibrant hues of the changing leaves pair perfectly with the palette of brownstones, and the air is electric with academics and subway stations that smell only slightly of urine.
But our lazy, hazy summer days are more precious than we think. We get just 98 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and of that, us day-job working-stiffs have just 14 weekends for warm weather-filled revelry at the city’s beautiful parks, in its bike lanes and on its beaches.
Compare that with the long, desolate wasteland of winter, which seemingly digs in its heels and drags on for infinity. By the time the first gusts of late September rustle the flannels from my closet, I’m already sick of it, gritting my teeth because it’s a warning shot for the long, cold, dark season ahead. Even when you think it must be over by the middle of April, there you are wrapping your head in a scarf again, emotionally and physically abused by the unrelenting, unapologetic, blistering winds. Why are we in such a rush to get summer off the calendar?
The blending of the seasons is cause for alarm. Getting the same beer you can find one part of the year anytime you want has a leveling effect, robbing each season of its unique charms, turning the year into a bland, tasteless, un-seasoned mush. Hold back on your seasonal creep, and keep your fall flavors out of my summer!
But keep those pumpkin beers cold: I’ll need one when the Christmas music starts too early in a month.