Rites of Summer : Some Play, Others Toil as Longest Day Arrives

Carmine Gangemi reached lazily across his beach towel for the suntan lotion and sighed contentedly.

“So far it’s been a perfect summer,” said the 25-year-old health food store owner from Rockaway, N.J. “All I’ve done this summer is lie in the sun and soak up the rays.”

True. But it was 2:21 p.m. Friday. And the summer of ’91 was only two minutes old.

Gangemi was positioned to catch plenty more rays as he lay on Venice Beach on Friday. That’s because it was the summer solstice--the longest day of the year as well as the first day of summer.

According to astronomers, summer officially began at 2:19 p.m. Friday--the moment the Earth reached the midway point of its yearlong journey around the sun. The summer solstice is the time of year when the sun is highest in the sky and the Northern Hemisphere is exposed to the most sunlight.

The solstice, which means “the sun stands still” in Latin, has religious connotations throughout the world. But in Los Angeles, it’s mostly observed by sun worshipers.

No solstice activities were planned at the Griffith Observatory above the Los Feliz area. So visitor Steve Barclift, 39, a Navy officer from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was treating his family to a regular planetarium show before traveling to his brother’s house for a barbecue.

“We’re spending the longest day of the year with relatives,” he laughed as family members relaxed in the sun on the observatory’s front steps. “I guess there’s probably something wrong with that. Maybe we should be out seeing more of the sights.”

But in nearby Hollywood, the first day of summer looked more like another day of springtime for visitor Victor Valdez, a New York City-area real estate manager.

Valdez, 51, was decked out in Bermuda shorts and goose bumps as he stood on a breezy scenic overlook above the Hollywood Bowl. His son, Vinny, 21, was trying to point out downtown Los Angeles in the distance. But it was too hazy to see the skyscrapers.

“It’s beautiful, what little you can see,” Valdez told his son, who is a Culver City computer technician. Vinny Valdez apologized and explained that L.A.’s real springtime--those few weeks each year when rain chases away the smog--is better for tourists than the summer.

But as murky as the first day of summer looked, officials of the South Coast Air Quality Management District in El Monte were registering only “moderate” air pollution for the Los Angeles Basin.

That didn’t stop officials of an automotive products company from picking the day to announce that Los Angeles’ legendary sunshine has helped make it the dirtiest of “America’s Dirty Dozen” cities for car appearance.

Ultraviolet rays combine with ozone, environmental fallout and hot weather to harm exposed automotive surfaces such as paint, rubber, plastic and vinyl, the study concluded. It used a 10-point rating system to give Los Angeles a 9.2 rating, far worse than Sacramento, Kansas City, Dallas, Denver and seven other cities.

In Santa Monica, that news brought smiles to Carlos Rodriguez, 21, and Petronilo Valle, 23. The two auto detailing shop workers were using a combination of elbow grease and industrial-strength wax to restore the sheen to an aging black Audi.

According to scientists, the summer of ’91 will last 93 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. That’s plenty of time for wax jobs. But they can cost up to $200 each.

And that’s the rub.