For me, September is also a slightly bittersweet month.
That’s because the season of chiringuitos is drawing to a close.

A chiringuito is a small beach bar found along the Spanish coast. Tables placed directly on the sand, slightly crooked parasols, plastic chairs where you can sit barefoot. The smoke from grilled sardines mingles with the sea breeze, and the menu usually consists of little more than fried fish, garlic shrimp, and paella. Many are little more than makeshift huts. And yet, I love these places more than I can put into words.

If I had to put the reason into words, I think a chiringuito is the ultimate expression of “the luxury of subtraction.” You take off your shoes, take off your watch, and need neither a reservation nor a dress code (though recently, being half-naked is technically prohibited). No music plays louder than the sound of the waves. It is a place where you can lay down, one by one on the sand, the armor you have put on in the city. There is nothing luxurious about it, and yet there is nothing you could possibly feel is missing.

When you arrive, you are still carrying the city’s sense of time with you. You check your smartphone, thinking about what time you’ll finish eating and where you’ll go next. But by the time the appetizer arrives, the fish is grilled, and the rice is cooked, you find yourself enveloped by a slower rhythm of time. That is the moment you realize that freedom does not mean having an infinite number of choices. It means being able to give up on just one more plan, without hesitation.

What you are eating there is not just fish and rice. You are eating the light that travels across the table through the gaps in the reed roof, eating the wind, eating the scent of the sea, eating the ocean spread out before you. A chiringuito is a place where you eat the environment itself. Even though I don’t drink alcohol, simply being there is enough to make me feel pleasantly tipsy.

The Mediterranean has stored up the heat of summer, while only the air has begun to move ahead into autumn. The piercing sunlight of midsummer softens, shadows stretch longer, and the afternoon light brushes across the table from the side. Sunset comes noticeably earlier, and the wind blowing in from the sea already carries a hint of autumn. It is neither too hot nor too cold. For a few weeks of the year, the body asks nothing of you.

Many chiringuitos, especially those far from the cities, close for the season in October. The parasols are folded away, the chairs are stacked, and the beach returns to its quiet winter face. That is precisely why a dish by the sea in September tastes better than at any other time of the year. Back when I was a DJ in Ibiza, I used to enjoy the closing parties in September while savoring the end of the season. Now, I enjoy the closing of the chiringuito season in much the same way.

When you live by following the climate, the end of one season is always the beginning of the next wind. By the time the parasols are folded away, the body of a “climate addict” has already begun searching for the next breeze.