Hot and Bothered

He keeps cranking out stuff like this:

This time there were no all-night happy hours in front of the bodegas, no battery-powered boom boxes blasting news updates between "In Da Club" and "Hey Ya!" No neighborhood tough guys made it their jobs to direct traffic, winking at the girls and waving flashlights, and you can bet nobody will sell T-shirts when it is done.

If mamas tell their babies about the blackout of ought-five, they will not speak of a whole region plunged into darkness, as in 2003, nor of a city united, in contrast to the riots of decades before. Instead, they will tell of a weird, hot, sometimes inspiring, mostly frustrating sunny day on Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.