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I’ve never been an air conditioning guy. Even when I was a child, I had an aversion to AC; when my parents installed window units in our Civil War–era house, I slept in the natural cool of the basement, preferring silverfish and crumbling walls to the industrial roar of fake coolness. Why? I don’t have one strong objection so much as a bunch of small ones. I associate AC with the multiplex, the office, the hotel room, the airport lounge—sterile nowhere places that you walk out of while muttering, “God, I’ve got to change my life.” There’s something mildly pathetic about it: You can’t tell me it’s not sad to huddle next to a vent, breathing manufactured air that s

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