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Nothing says Labor Day weekend quite like gridlock.Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press

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Good morning on this feverish Thursday.

It’s here, that last gasp of summer, the last chance to wear white pants and skip town early on Friday afternoon:Labor Day weekend.

The holiday always falls on the first Monday in September, but this year it’s the latest it could possibly be. Schools around the country have already started, and many people have already moved on toward fall.

But in New York, it still feels like summer.

If you’re heading for a toasty beach, or a breezy lake, you’ll be joined by millions of others on the roadways and railroads, or in the skies.

According to AAA, more than 30 million Americans will be traveling by car, as gasoline prices hit their lowest point in a decade — around $2.83 a gallon in New York.

Last year, 2.5 million vehicles chugged out of state on the highways, and 1.5 million people jetted off from our airports. This year promises more of the same.

Of course, there are a few tricks to employ:

• Stay home. City beaches will be less crowded and so will lots of other places. (Here’s our guide.)

• Take a train, but beware the Cannonball train to Montauk: It’s truly a free-for-all. And not in a good way.

• Leave in the middle of the night, or really early in the morning.

• Invent a teleporter. Then let us borrow it.

Have a wonderful, warm, sun-splattered, laugh-filled holiday weekend.

Here’s what else is happening:

WEATHER

Surprise! It’s still hot. A high of 91 today will make you sweat, and there will be no real breeze to cool you off.

Tomorrow will be cooler — back to the low 80s. Brr.

IN THE NEWS

• Police officers and officials from other city agencies will visit homeless encampments as a way to address the city’s rising homeless population. [New York Times] ...

• ... And Mayor de Blasio visited one in the Bronx, vowing to clean it up and help the people who call it home. [Daily News]

• The availability of synthetic marijuana to the city’s homeless has transformed a Harlem block into a “street of zombies.” [New York Times]

• Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, said New York is behind schedule on its plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. [Daily News]

• New York University removed Bill Cosby’s name from its film workshop, in the wake of sexual assault allegations against him. [New York Times]

• A new report on the city’s subway system said it won’t be in good condition until 2067. [amNewYork]

• Melissa Mark-Viverito, speaker of the City Council, endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. [New York Times]

• There’s a giant painting of Pope Francis in Midtown. [New York Times]

• Travel + Leisure magazine has ranked New York as the sixth most unfriendly city in the world. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. [Gothamist]

• Scoreboard: Mets bridle Phillies, 9-4. Yankees bleach Red Sox, 13-8.

• For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Thursday Briefing.

COMING UP TODAY

• Play chess in a whole new way with Human Chess at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park. 4 p.m. [Free]

• Take a tour of Newtown Creek and learn about its industrial beginnings and status as one of the most polluted waterways in the country. 5 p.m. [$40]

• Dance to music only you can hear at a Silent Disco in Hunters Point Park South in Long Island City. Doors open at 6 p.m.; dance starts at 7:30 p.m. [Free]

• Join artists and curators for a discussion of the Bronx arts scene at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

• Kick the (LED-lit) Can in McCarren Park in Brooklyn. 6:30 p.m. [Free; registration required]

• A launch party for Amitav Ghosh’s new book, “Flood of Fire,” the final installment in his Ibis Trilogy, at Greenlight bookstore in Downtown Brooklyn. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

• Liberty host Sky, 7 p.m. (MSG).

• For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

COMMUTE

• Subway and PATH

• Railroads: L.I.R.R., Metro-North, N.J. Transit, Amtrak

• Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

• Alternate-side parking: in effect until Sept. 7.

• Ferries: Staten Island Ferry, New York Waterway, East River Ferry

• Airports: La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark

AND FINALLY …

At the last count, New York’s street trees numbered somewhere around 600,000.

Many of them are London planes, Norway maples, Callery pears, Honeylocusts and pin oaks.

But there’s only one known for how it grew in Brooklyn: The Tree of Heaven, or the Ailanthus altissima, native to China and Taiwan.

It is the tree that Frances “Francie” Nolan, the main character in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” sees growing from her tenement window.

An invasive species, the Tree of Heaven can grow in all kinds of soil, and can withstand drought and disturbance alike.

In her book, Betty Smith wrote of the tree, “No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky.

“It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in tenement districts.

“ ... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.”

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