For ten or twelve days a summer, Seattle stops being the city it advertises and becomes a hot city without air conditioning. The buses get unbearable. The west-facing apartments cook through the evening. People talk about it like it is an event, and in the climate sense it is — these stretches are getting longer.
Capitol Hill handles them better than most of the city. The neighborhood is built on a small plateau with mature street trees, and the residential blocks east of Broadway have nearly continuous canopy. Volunteer Park at the northern end is forty acres of old conifers and a water tower you can climb for the wind. The picks below are for the days you would rather not be inside but cannot do Green Lake at noon.