I have lived all over the country, but usually not near big cities. For the last few years I have been living just north of Seattle. Here, for days before the holiday you get explosions every couple of hours, if not more. Then around 9pm on the Fourth it is nonstop explosions for hours. If my memory serves right this will last until one or so. Usually, I wouldn’t care, but this year I have to be up at 4:30 for work, and I now have 2 cats. One cat is really not doing well with it. Fans and music can’t cover it.
Is this a Seattle thing? Is it like this elsewhere? If you are one of the people doing them, how much money do you spend? Millions of dollars must be going up in flames tonight.
Sitting in my house in Puyallup (south of Seattle) looking over the Orting valley and it is insanity. Just a constant barrage. Pretty, but ridiculous. The entire valley is now almost hidden by a layer of haze. Flashes of light in the smoke look like artillery fire.
And, yeah I have to be up at 4:30 too. Hoping since it is a weekday will calm down soon.
I’m north of Seattle (Bothell) and it definitely sounds like a war zone out there now, and my cats are freaking out as well. Seems about par for the course, though.
Yo dudes! I’m in West Seattle and I wouldn’t call it a war zone exactly but there is some definite constant fireworks activity. It’s actually been a fair bit easier than I remember previous years, just because it seems further away. Maybe I’m misremembering though.
Personal fireworks have been illegal in California for so long, I’d pretty much forgotten what a horror show they are. Then I spent a 4th of July in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, where there’s apparently no laws or regulation of any kind that I could tell. Maybe they draw the line at sticks of dynamite, but it’s close enough. People were setting off what amounts to small mortars in every neighborhood for miles around. The noise was incredible.
Ok… Firstly 60-80min communte would be depressingly long for me, though I assume you don’t / can’t move closer. Secondly being at the office at 7 seems damn early. Does everyone start that early? Can you leave the office at 3pm then? What happened to 9-5?
And regarding the fireworks: Since I don’t live in the states, there’s obviously no fireworks right now. But I can confirm that new years eve is definitely a war zone of fireworks here! If you head downtown or the river its really nuts and you gotta be careful not to get hit by rockets & set alight!
I generally work 7-4 to try to mitigate some of the evening traffic, but there are definitely some there who look askance at people leaving before 5 regardless of when they start. Moving closer isn’t terribly feasible at the moment just due to the crazy housing prices in the Seattle area. Besides, it’s not so much the distance as the traffic–it actually only takes me about 15 minutes longer to bike to work than it does to drive or bus it in.
There was a shit ton of fireworks earlier in Bellevue, just east of Seattle. My dog hates it. We loaded her up on drugs, but still she paces as if the world were coming to an end.
If you work in software, it’s typical to start late. When I was at Microsoft, everyone would look at you funny if you scheduled a meeting at 9 am, god forbid earlier. Most people roll in around 10ish. But then a lot of these dudes stay late and you get those big email threads starting around 5 pm on Sunday, so…
But 7 am is pretty early start time. So is getting up at 4:30 or 5. I get up that early, but it’s to either take a child to an early morning swim practice (thank god they are both licensed to drive now) or do a little writing before I go to work.
Same here, live in Bothell, but work in Redmond. Not an accountant, but want to be (that’s my degree, but no experience, so AP). My commute is about 45 minutes if I leave at 5:30. Any later and it just gets worse. Can’t afford to live closer and most of my office drives even further.
Mostly died down now besides someone that is relatively close still going.
Fireworks are illegal in Illinois too, but that doesn’t mean squat. Indiana has legal fireworks, and they literally stack the stores at the border. So most of Chicagoland has fireworks going off on nearly every block.
North Carolina is pretty crazy. Last night, while driving out to watch a nearby official fireworks show at a park, we stopped at a Sonic drive in located in a shopping center with a Harris Teeter and a bar. Someone at the far edge of the parking lot was sending up so many and such enormous fireworks that for a second, we wondered if we might have wound up stopping closer to the intended park than we realized. Nope, just an INCREDIBLY enthusiastic batch of amateurs who kept it blowing up for our entire 15m stop there. It was honestly kind of impressive!
Re: the other point, I have a six minute commute to work and am just expected to be there eight hours total, which don’t include my one hour, take when I need it lunch break, so long as I’m not routinely rolling in at ten or whatever. I usually show up at 9:30 and leave at 6:15-6:30.
Live in South Carolina which may be the capital for fireworks. They have real fireworks down here! Looks like professional grade what you might see at a beach. We sit on our patio and can watch the various housing developments all shoot em off. Most neighborhoods stop about midnight.
Some families down here spend like 2 grand a year on them. Neighborhood block parties will often have a tremendous amount of them (I assume they all pitch in to purchase).
The 4th is the biggest day for them but pretty much every holiday you hear and see some (even special birthdays - probably what they forgot to use on the 4th).
I wholeheartedly agree with this. SC beach fronts on Independence Day are fucking insane.
Up in NC on Lake Norman, there was a scattering of fireworks around the lake. Things didn’t go on for too long this year though. I think due to the thunderstorms that have been never ending the last few weeks, everyone wanted to set off what they had before cloud cover rolled back in.
I live in the metro detroit area. And yes its like a war zone… only it runs for about a week. It culminates on july 4th where it is like being caught in a carpet bombing. Fortunately my dog handles it well. I feel sorry for the people around here with pets that don’t and for the pets as well.
