Is the 4th like a war zone where you live?

I used to live in Forest Hills, Queens. I had a 7th floor apartment with an unobstructed view south, all the way across Brooklyn to the towers of the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. From that window, July 4th looked like Bagdad on the first night of the Gulf War.

Illegal within city limits here in Michigan/Ann Arbor, but it doesn’t seem to matter. This year was actually slightly milder than the past couple have been, but the heavy use started last Saturday evening, and we got it every night through last night. It sounded like a war zone last night up until around midnight at least. My poor cats were freaked as they are every year.

This time-lapse aerial shot of LA is pretty awesome:

My neighborhood puts up a pretty decent block party/fireworks show. It’s nice. Our houses all surround a little neighborhood park with an asphalt basketball court and play area, so we can all see everyone’s fireworks all night.

What blows me away is how much some people seem to spend on this stuff. I like to watch things fly up into the air and explode like any good American, but some of these people are nuts. We have a couple of families that always seem to spend at least a thousand dollars each year on just fireworks. Not only do they have a lot of them, but they’re all the bigger ones. One guy down the block even sets up a mortar rack for his display.

We’ll grab a couple of packs from the fireworks tent - mainly cheapo Roman candles, sparklers, and spinners - and blow our wad, then watch the fanatics put on a show.

I’ve only gone and launched my own a few times. One year I put about $300 in and had a bunch of the big repeaters and mortars. A few of those thousand repeater boxes will cost a pretty penny, but 3 of them will last you a good long while.

But I’ve got kids now, so can’t go blowing a few hundred dollars like that anymore.

They may be illegal but they are all over the place. My neighborhood has apparently aged out of the sparklers and whistlers and gone straight to the bottle rockets and loud boomers. We had a few last night that sounded like they went off just feet from the house. But thankfully they ended early, probably done by 10pm. The cops in my town don’t take nicely to illegal stuff. I talked to someone who lives in Fresno proper and he said the booms went on until 1am at his house.

That’s the sort of display that keeps those space aliens orbiting the Earth from actually invading…

We have a balcony out back that lets us watch most of our small socal valley, which includes 4-5 cities that all put on their own show. No crowds, no fuss, just walk out and watch.

Directly below, about 60 feet down and 100-200 feet out is a new neighbor that thought it would be cool to detonate mortar shells, on the larger end for consumer purchasable versions. I didn’t mind, it was pretty much eye level with our balcony so we got a fairly spectacular eyeful but the third one did start setting off multiple car alarms through our dense neighborhood, which apparently put an end to their festivities.

We saw this repeated all throughout the valley on top of the normal city sized displays so the whole illegal rule is frequently snubbed for sure.

I spent the last 4th up in Puyallup, and can attest to the whole crazy neighbor thing there. I thought Missouri was bad but Pierce county is on another level.

Yeah, I live in a place in California where fireworks are illegal. And it is loud explosions and dogs barking all damn night. And, in previous years, for several nights afterwards.

I also live in a neighborhood with houses that are known to burn down very quickly (one did burn down a couple years ago, not fireworks related though). So I wish people would CUT IT OUT.

I’m in Manhattan, and yeah the show went on for a couple of hours. Doesn’t bother me though.

Tons of fireworks here in Ohio (where fireworks are illegal), but my neighbors usually stop before midnight and it doesn’t effect my dog. Plus it beats the New Year’s celebrations where I work which involve enormous amounts of gunfire.

It’s gotten a lot worse in my neighborhood over the years. I had an idle fantasy about spending the evening driving around reporting people to the police for their illegal fireworks.

I always take one of my vacations the week of the 4th, so I’m up late anyway, and so it doesn’t bother me.

We’re in the middle of a drought this year though, so all personal fireworks have been banned.
So last night, all I heard was the “official” display going on at the state capitol grounds here in Bismarck. I generally will go out on my deck and watch it, but as it’s pretty much the same every year, I didn’t this year.

Across the river in Mandan, however, is the yearly “Mandan Rodeo Days Celebration”. They always put on a big display, along with a rodeo and a huge parade earlier, “Buggies And Blues”, which is a classic car show and outdoor music concerts, along with “Art In The Park”, which is an arts and crafts show, with food vendors. This is all a huge attraction that draws people from all over the United States, and the traffic is so bad, I won’t go anywhere near it. Which is the main reason I always take work off around this time. I drive a paratransit bus for a living, and dealing with the traffic while being on a tight schedule causes my stress to go through the roof. I’ll generally always take off New Years Eve as well, because I fear and loathe drunk drivers.

So this year, I merely stayed up late, never went outside the house, posted on the forums a bit, and listened to the booms and whistles. I also played some music through the big living room stereo system, which also helped. I’m old now, and my new motto has been, “There’s no place like home.”

Mandan’s Buggies and Blues.

Mandan’s Rodeo.

Art In The Park.

Parade.

My aunt has done this for many, many years now, and she always has very moving stories to tell of her work. Thank you so much for what you do, man :)

You’re welcome. :)
I love my job. All of my clients are varying degrees of disabled, some extremely so, and what keeps me going, and keeps me optimistic about my own life circumstances, is that fact that 90% of these folks are extremely upbeat, have a great attitude, and love life. They’re involved in so many things, and it’s an honor to be part of an organization that can take them wherever they want to go (but I personally draw the line at that damn Mandan traffic fiasco). Seeing their positive attitude in the face of their severe disabilities is a great perspective check for me. And I have gotten to know and love so many of them. In my 17 years doing this, I’ve lost so many of them, young and old, to their various illnesses, and I cry every time. They are just wonderful people that just got dealt a bad hand in life, but deal with it better than most people (myself included) who are so cynical about relatively minor issues.

And yeah, I can relate with your aunt. I’ve got a million great stories of all kinds. It’s a very interesting job; never the same day twice.

So apparently there were so many calls for the fire department on the 4th the local fire department stopped reporting to calls for paramedics. They had no one left to go out. Fresno is a pretty big area, a metropolitan area of probably 700k people now. Imagine, no paramedics being available.

Mobile Fireworks:

Another 4th, another war zone. Neither of my cats will come out of hiding. Just trying to leave them be. Have fans going and Beethoven’s 9 blaring (very little bass), but you can’t mask the near constant explosions.

At least this year I took tomorrow off.

Yeah, it’s started up in my neighborhood, seems heavier than past years. Kids will probably end up crawling into bed with us.

Was just coming to ask that of you and other Seattleites. @BiggerBoat

What the hell is up with this year? It seems considerably worse than usual. And that isn’t counting the massive blast that sounded like it was right on top of the house at 2am last night.