Summertime nostalgia
An ode to my summer fantasy
There’s a heat wave in LA, I’m drinking a can of coca-cola, and I started watching 1989’s first season of Baywatch.
I recently realized that summer is very nostalgic to me. The way it plays in my head is like a scene of an 80s tv show. Ironically, I’ve never watched Baywatch until now, but I watched a lot of Magnum P.I., The Love Boat, and tennis matches with my Nonna growing up. That’s probably why the tv is a symbol of comfort to me now.
Coca-cola fizz, palm tree silhouettes on deep orange sunsets, muffled radios and ice cream bars, allow me to set the scene to what my personal Summertime looks like, through sound, sight, and taste.
Sound, South Florida from the passenger seat
I moved to South Florida from Switzerland when I was young. There’s something a bit magical about being young and experiencing a new country through the eyes of enamored adults. America was like a dream to my family, especially to my Nonno (grandpa if you’re not Italian). He was the driving force. Our first trip to Florida I was maybe 3, 1993? We spent the holidays there. We went to Disney World, Universal Studios, Burger King, the beach. My dad and my Nonno were obsessed with Florida’s houses, a real estate fantasy, so much so that half our home videos are just footage of them driving past residential streets with 90s worship music or jazz playing in the car.
Truthfully, there’s something quite charming about my mind being a great big Fantasyland because so is my grandpa’s. A generational trait, a gift passed down.
“All Right” by Christopher Cross takes me back to those South Florida drives in the backseat of our car. Years after 1993, and my dad would still play jazz or cds from his 80s collection in the car. And I’d stare out the window as we’d drive past Boca Raton palm trees and residential streets. “Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox, “Spirits in the Material World” by The Police, “Take Me Home” by Phil Collins, and “Waiting for a Star to Fall” by Boy Meets Girl have also been on my playlist these past few months. I listened to Waiting for a Star to Fall first thing every morning for weeks.
Huey Lewis and the News also plays in my Summertime soundtrack. All because of that Back to the Future scene at the beginning of the movie where Marty McFly rides his skateboard on the back of a car while “The Power of Love” plays. I thought that scene was so hot as a child.
Another very specific sound in my ideal Summer is the sound of muffled radio music at the beach and radio hosts talking about the heat. Like in this scene of Jaws. Or this Huey Lewis music video. There is a beach cafe at a beach I love to go to between Santa Monica and Malibu and they play music over a speaker, and it brings me so much joy just to sit by it for hours and live out a piece of my silly little summer fantasy.
Other Summer sounds include the fizz of bubbles in a can of coke, the Mentos commercial song, seagulls, distant kids laughing, tennis rackets hitting tennis balls, crickets at night, ice cubes in a glass, and lawn sprinklers.
Sight, Hot hot high saturation
You can’t create an environment without specific tones, colors, textures. What does your environment look like? I’m obsessed with the colors of Baywatch. Maybe it’s the California coast, or the film (it was originally shot on high quality 35mm film and later remastered for widescreen HD screens). Reds on blues. Slightly sunburnt skin tones. Orange hues. Black silhouettes on glowing sunsets. It’s color candy! A visual manifestation of heat. And precisely what Summer looks like in my head.
You’ll find this color vibrancy and hazy warmth in other places, like Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”, set during a heatwave. Tony Scott’s “Top Gun”. And the iconic 2000 “Charlie’s Angels”.
Other specific summer visuals for me is the heat coming off the ground to create a glowing fuzzy scene, Tom Sellek’s red (red, again!) Ferrari and short shorts in Magnum P.I., and photos of my family in the south of Italy. My mom and Nonna are southern Italians, and we were there when my sister and I were very little. The visuals of my family in a home without AC, my Nonna wearing long lounge dresses and large sunglasses, and my sister’s little bonnet are engrained in my mind.
Taste, Lemon and lime
My favorite part. I’m a Taurus after all. Summertime nostalgia is nothing without a look into the various foods and liquids I’ve loved consuming during the summer over the years. Of course, determining the tastes of your imagined environment isn’t limited to food. But, in my nostalgic summer, it primarily is.
And this concludes my Summertime mood board. What does your Summertime mood board sound, look, and taste like? Is summer as nostalgic to you as it is to me?
I hope you enjoy the last bits of summer we have left.
The subtle haze in that Charlie’s Angels still is so good. Also need a lemon granita stat