@blaineg@lljk@mike808 went to a junkyard to get a part for an old 65 chevy impala one time and asked the guy working there “how you feel?”… reply: “with my left hand” (missing his right arm, so yeah)… OK.
@tinamarie1974 went to locally produced show in International Falls many years ago. The city hosted it at the football stadium, and whoever did the charges was woefully ill-equipped for the task. They all went off about 100 ft off the ground and the raining embers trashed a bunch of landau roofs and convertible tops on the cars in the parking lot… City forked out a bunch to make the needed repairs.
On the bright side, they were pretty spectacular since they were so F!@#%$@ close!
@ahacksaw@RiotDemon The town I recently moved from was notorious for that.
The week of the 4th was insane, but the rest of the year wasn’t off limits. It’s October 5th at 4 am and someone shoots off a random Piccolo Pete with report. My boyfriend seriously considered running for Mayor on a pro fireworks platform, the place was so crazy for them.
@cinoclav@KittySprinkles Actually I was hearing some just now too. At first I thought it was thunder since it supposed to rain and then I realized it was fireworks. Or at least fire crackers.
@cinoclav@Kidsandliz Yeah they went up for sale in town yesterday, but there’s been explosions for a couple days. I kinda hate that it’s legal in such a decent sized town.
@cinoclav@Kidsandliz Wait, those twats went backwards?!? Most places are finally outlawing them. Over here, we’re in the only legal town for quite a ways. Fucking backwards assholes will never give it up either. We spend our night soaking everything down.
@cpierce Seriously. In Philly, there are two seasons. Like, all freaking summer with increased intensity around Memorial Day, the fourth of course and Labor Day and then the several week window around New Year’s. So irritating.
Legalizing some fireworks was one of the dumber moves of our legislature. Now anyone can buy them anywhere with predictable results.
I look forward to watching the United States DC Fireworks Show on Public Television! My favorite show of the year. Music, entertainment, Military; what’s not to like? It is ALWAYS a fun event, with the Fireworks going off in the background near the end! Record it, then watch at your pleasure, with your puppies laying in your lap, since you will have control of the remote control.
Yep, fireworks are Meh. They were great when I was a kid, but now they are not worth the hassle.
Except Zips. If I find Zips I’ll drop $10 on a dozen random moments of entertainment. Alas, they are illegal in Oregon (like every other firework that could potentially be fun for anyone over the age of 4.) I’m not sure if I can be bothered to drive up to Vantucky.
In high school, over at friend’s house. One of those harmless little rolling tanks is set off. It putts along, shooting little fireballs, then catches a crack in the concrete, pivots, and starts firing directly at his grandma who was seated comfortably in her chair. Much rapid motion and hilarity ensues. Grandma was ok.
Same friend’s house another year. Their neighbor has a misfire and torches a shrubbery. It looked very green, but went up like it was bone dry. Fortunately it was near the sidewalk, not the house, so it was extinguished quickly.
Another year there’s the usual pop pop, boom boom all evening. And then there is a massive KABOOM from the foothills. We felt it as much as heard it.
It seemed deathly quiet for a few moments, and then every vehicle siren in town went off, and headed for the foothills. I never did hear what they found, but it must have been at least a partial stick of dynamite.
@blaineg several years back a bunch of us got together at a friend’s house to set off fireworks for the 4th.
I have no idea why I thought this would be cool, but I set a “48 color Pearl” firework on top of the tube we were using to launch artillery shells. This is basically a bunch of individual Roman candles bundled together into about a 5 inch circle, and I placed it atop a 1-1/2 inch piece of cardboard tube. Because somehow it would be cooler if those fireballs launched from a foot off the street instead of from the street itself.
Of course the first chamber to go off would be the one closest to the fuse, which would naturally be closest to us spectators. So the first shot upends the thing, off the tube, onto the street, facing us and the house.
The delay between the first and second shot felt like several minutes in one of those dreams where you can only move in slow motion. The next shot fired directly into the group. It also set the whole firework spinning like a top, so that 46 more cheery colorful fireballs went out at approximately strike zone level in every direction. Havoc ensued.
The one casualty I remember was my friend’s old girlfriend, whose sweatpants were set afire by a green fireball and, being nylon, melted onto her leg. He heard no end of it and had to leave early (tbh, she was not fun to listen to when things were going well, so listening to her berate him for her having been set aflame was a real treat). I felt bad, but kinda not as bad as if it had been someone completely innocent.
Overall, I’d rate it 10/10, would do again if I had a blast shield and a whole group of people I didn’t like.
@blaineg One summer (maybe mid 60’s or so) we did July 4th with friends in St Louis. The adults were all firing off firecrackers and bottle rockets and the odd roman candle in the street when the police came by and told us in no uncertain terms to cut that shit out.
Well, there was still a good bit left to shoot off, so what could they do but take them into the basement to fire off the rest!
Yes, I believe alcohol was involved.
@blaineg@djslack I can still remember coming home with tiny holes in our clothing and melted into the webbing of the lawn chairs after most of our July 4th parties when I was younger.
Oh and inevitable asshat the threw one (or several) into the BBQ … burgers just don’t taste the same with bits of paper and gunpowder residue on them…
Oh, one more good one, in a different vein. We were using a glass (remember them?) pop bottle (7-Up, I think) to launch bottle rockets. After everything is done, we clean up the mess, and drop the bottle in the sink.
Later that night my mom (who is notorious for not wasting ANYTHING) sees a pop bottle with an inch of liquid in the bottom, and decides to finish it off. Instead of some flat 7-Up, she gets a swig of bottle rocket smoke and cinders. Ewww!
@blaineg I had forgotten about using pop bottles for that. We used to shoot them off from the top of the hill at my grandmother’s farm using pop bottles. That was always fun. Thanks for reminding me of that.
Veterans with PTSD have a harder time with fireworks that dogs do. My dog won’t go potty outside if one firecracker goes off and my husband is reliving the Tet invasion as he hides in a dark corner. If you have to shoot fireworks at least hold it to two nights, i.e. NY Eve and NY night or July 3rd and 4th. Every night for two weeks is to much.
Ah, life , liberty and the pursuit of overindulgence. Let’s eat too much, drink too much, spend too much and then at the end of the day set off enough fireworks in one cul du sac to bring back memories of the fall of Saigon! That’s America, Baby! Sure people get hurt and property gets burned but that’s all part of the fun. Hold my beer and watch this!
Problem I’m my neighborhood is the idiots shooting guns into the air. I live in a city. Last year some dolt gave their kid the gun, and he shot up a neighbor’s house. Police refused to do anything because no one was hurt. They had plaster all over their living room.
@Wimateeka That incident was at the very least Reckless Endangerment. If there is the POSSIBILITY that someone could have been injured or killed, it is Reckless Endangerment.
@Wimateeka That’s how it was around the house I recently moved out of. Lived there for 20 odd yrs. Lotta guns going off. But, most houses were basically about 1/2 mile apart at least so never any probs that I’d ever heard of.
i really enjoy watching fireworks. i can see three or four displays from inside my apartment on the fourth, which is great. however i also live in a neighborhood where as soon as the weather gets warm everyone seems compelled to go outside at random times in the middle of the night and light one or two off, every night until winter. it’s just weird, like some compulsion that lies dormant until the temps get above 70F. i don’t mean like lighting a bunch off during or after a party or a bbq, but like one person lighting off one firework at 230am on a tuesday. i’m not really fazed by it, i just can’t really understand it.
I enjoy watching professional fireworks displays and can see two or three from the roof on the 4th. Unfortunately although the dog is not bothered by them (or thunder) it would bother me to have him on the roof and it bothers him for me to be on the roof without him, so we usually go outside and listen to the fireworks while watching the fireflies.
My favorite fireworks story is from many many years ago when my brother brought up a sack of the good stuff from SC and my uncle, who was mayor of his town at the time, insisted on having us over to liven up the old graveyard across the street from his house. Bro’ had invested in some pretty impressive pyrotechnics, and I lit one of the rockets and was walking back to join the relatives, who were standing back by the graves of our earliest paternal-line ancestors in the New World, when the rocket ignited, fell over, and shot right at me. I cleared a gravestone with a standing broad jump and happily it was sturdy enough to withstand the blast but that pretty much ended my interest in backyard fireworks displays.
@aetris Cool story bro. My fireworks story is one year I was up at the lake on the shore of a pretty big cove that was jammed with boats, all us there to watch some professionals shoot off some from a boat in the middle. Somehow an error was made and the boat caught on fire. Due to the packed in nature of everybody not much could be done and it burned down. to the water line.
@aetris I was about 11 or 12. I was hoping…but they were able to at least get/jump off with the munitions. It was hard to tell at night, in the dark from the shore. The yacht club changed their policy to restrict the boats in future years.
Yup! My Dad told me everybody got out safely. I remember because it happened the same afternoon he got back from taking our dog to a nice farm in the country where she could just play & play & chase rabbits all day long!
The single best was July 3 anchored by the Statue of Liberty (working on a 130’ schooner) and watched fireworks from the boat with nothing obstructing the view (they did them 2 nights in a row).
The other “best” fireworks times I have had have been on tall ships - New York City (both from the boat and once took passengers to some waterfront park area with a fort?? that was an absolute crush of people - I think it was called Battery Park?). They were shot off from fireboats pulling barges and then at the end the fireboats shoot colored (red white and blue) water into the air.
Each 4th of July on a schooner or brigantine we’d be part of the parade of sail. One year I was a guest on the Uruguay’s Navy class A (eg one of the “big” ones) tall ship.That was amazing!
Some good ones from the boat in Boston Harbor, Norfolk Harbor (although the wind was blowing one year and we had to climb all over the rigging to remove hot embers), and Atlantic City Harbor.
One kind of cool time was flying across the country July 4th headed west at night and flying over multiple city’s fireworks. They look so small then. Flew closer to them coming into land at Salt Lake City to change planes.
I got to see the fireworks for Bastille Day once as a teenager. In that big park in central Paris, standing about 100 yards from the Eiffel Tower.
The French do that up nicely.
NYC always has lots of street fireworks leading up to New Year’s and to Chinese New Year’s.
Yeah it’s annoying, esp at 3am.
But they really do up the 4th. NYC has displays all along the water, so wherever you are, if you can get to near the water, or up high, you stand a pretty good chance of being able to see some great stuff.
@f00l Yes the NYC fireworks are spectacular. My best view ever of them was the year we were anchored off of the Statue of Liberty with an unobstructed view. Incredible.
I like 'em if I’m somewhere where I can watch a good display but not going out of my way to see them anymore. Grew up watching the Sikorsky’s display which was pretty good.
@cinoclav I’m going over to Facebook and post this right now, as a reminder to folks. I don’t much care for fireworks, and I hate crowds, so I haven’t been to a display in years. Every single year there’s at least two or three “Have you seen our dog?” posts by locals, and it makes me sad.
When I was a girl, there were three-legged races, and watermelon eating contests, and other kinds of fun. The fireworks at the end lasted perhaps ten minutes, and I usually slept through it. Those were fun days.
@Shrdlu That’s actually where I got it from. When we had dogs, one didn’t really care about anything, the other would go a little crazy when he heard fireworks.
Thru my childhood and teenage years I thought fireworks were lots of fun. Up at and including M-80’s. I suppose we didn’t take the risks seriously.
But we never set them off at the house or in the neighborhood. We always went to a big concrete parking lot. No chance of setting dry grass on fire that way.
I never heard them in my neighborhood or near houses, except for a few occasional black cat firecrackers. These activities were quickly squelched by local adults. (At a time when the local communities had strongish personal bonds).
Now, I enjoy the professional displays. As long as I don’t have to deal with crowds to see them.
Protip: 2 sawhorses and a sheet of plywood or an old door. A cordless screwdriver/drill, a bag of 1"-2" wood screws, and a fireplace lighter or a bunch of punks.
Buy only shells, the kits with a dozen shells and a tube or two. Minimize $/shell is your guide here. Max shells per dollar is the goal.
Pull all if the shells into a bucket.
Take a bag of short wood screws and screw down the mortar tubes all along the perimeter of the door/plywood sheet.
Rules are simple:
You load 'em, you get to light 'em.
The local permanent fireworks place can get you down to $1/shell. So a $300 budget gets you about 300 shells.
Even if you’re able to setup 10 and fire them off in a minute, thats a half hour of non-stop shells and oohs and ahhhs. You’ll get tired of loading and lighting, and you can work in shifts loading one side while firing off the other side. Keep extra tubes in case of failures or blowouts. Just tear it off and screw down another one.
We’re now in the wind down from the 4th. We’ll get a week, maybe two at the outside, lull, then it will be the ramp up for the 24th of July. It’s the commemoration of the first pioneer group entering the Salt Lake valley in 1847.
So twice a month, every July. Fireworks stands must love Utah.
Gonna need Meh to sell some fireworks, for I have little money and even less regard for my fingers.
@lljk I heard all the best fireworks are sold by a guy with an eyepatch and three fingers.
@blaineg @lljk …you mean ‘Lefty’?
@blaineg @chienfou @lljk
Nah. His brother, “Nubbs”.
@blaineg @lljk @mike808 went to a junkyard to get a part for an old 65 chevy impala one time and asked the guy working there “how you feel?”… reply: “with my left hand” (missing his right arm, so yeah)… OK.
After seeing fireworks a handful of time they get kinda boring. I’ve seen enough in my lifetime I wouldn’t miss them if I never see fireworks again.
My poor puppers is cowering from fireworks right now. She’s a nervous wreck on the 4th!
Huge show in my neighborhood, NEXT to my house. Love the display BUT makes me nervous…
@tinamarie1974 went to locally produced show in International Falls many years ago. The city hosted it at the football stadium, and whoever did the charges was woefully ill-equipped for the task. They all went off about 100 ft off the ground and the raining embers trashed a bunch of landau roofs and convertible tops on the cars in the parking lot… City forked out a bunch to make the needed repairs.
On the bright side, they were pretty spectacular since they were so F!@#%$@ close!
@chienfou that is my worst nightmare every year!
all is well Thursday night
@tinamarie1974 locally we have a big show thrown by Russel Lands on Lake Martin. You can see it for miles so no worries…
Absolutely love fireworks. Not a fan of the week long randomly shot off fireworks though. Just keep it to the holiday, please.
@RiotDemon Yeah, I like fireworks displays. Not so much idiots shooting off firecrackers in the street for a week after.
@ahacksaw @RiotDemon The town I recently moved from was notorious for that.
The week of the 4th was insane, but the rest of the year wasn’t off limits. It’s October 5th at 4 am and someone shoots off a random Piccolo Pete with report. My boyfriend seriously considered running for Mayor on a pro fireworks platform, the place was so crazy for them.
Sick and tired of asshole neighbors setting off noisy fireworks at inappropriate times.
@cinoclav fucking right. I like them, very much so, but not three days before and all night and then another two weeks afterwards.
@KittySprinkles Some jerkoff around here was just setting them off.
@cinoclav damn jerkoffs
@cinoclav @KittySprinkles Actually I was hearing some just now too. At first I thought it was thunder since it supposed to rain and then I realized it was fireworks. Or at least fire crackers.
@cinoclav @Kidsandliz Yeah they went up for sale in town yesterday, but there’s been explosions for a couple days. I kinda hate that it’s legal in such a decent sized town.
@Kidsandliz @KittySprinkles Pennsylvania legalized them in 2017. Bastards!
@cinoclav @Kidsandliz Wait, those twats went backwards?!? Most places are finally outlawing them. Over here, we’re in the only legal town for quite a ways. Fucking backwards assholes will never give it up either. We spend our night soaking everything down.
More like, “YOU ARE TERRORIZING MY DOG, MIDDLE-AGED DADS.”
I like fireworks on holidays, especially the 4th, from about dusk to midnight or so. But 2am on July 5th? FUCK OFF.
@cpierce Seriously. In Philly, there are two seasons. Like, all freaking summer with increased intensity around Memorial Day, the fourth of course and Labor Day and then the several week window around New Year’s. So irritating.
Legalizing some fireworks was one of the dumber moves of our legislature. Now anyone can buy them anywhere with predictable results.
I think Jason Pierre-Paul should come and show us how to light the fireworks.
@phendrick If you would like even more graphic details:
https://www.si.com/nfl/2016/04/12/jason-pierre-paul-giants-fireworks-destroyed-hand-exclusive
[Not recommended for the queasy mehtizen, but might be a good lesson for your daredevil kids.]
Now, who wants more iced tea?
I look forward to watching the United States DC Fireworks Show on Public Television! My favorite show of the year. Music, entertainment, Military; what’s not to like? It is ALWAYS a fun event, with the Fireworks going off in the background near the end! Record it, then watch at your pleasure, with your puppies laying in your lap, since you will have control of the remote control.
Meh.
Yep, fireworks are Meh. They were great when I was a kid, but now they are not worth the hassle.
Except Zips. If I find Zips I’ll drop $10 on a dozen random moments of entertainment. Alas, they are illegal in Oregon (like every other firework that could potentially be fun for anyone over the age of 4.) I’m not sure if I can be bothered to drive up to Vantucky.
Some favorite fireworks experiences:
In high school, over at friend’s house. One of those harmless little rolling tanks is set off. It putts along, shooting little fireballs, then catches a crack in the concrete, pivots, and starts firing directly at his grandma who was seated comfortably in her chair. Much rapid motion and hilarity ensues. Grandma was ok.
Same friend’s house another year. Their neighbor has a misfire and torches a shrubbery. It looked very green, but went up like it was bone dry. Fortunately it was near the sidewalk, not the house, so it was extinguished quickly.
Another year there’s the usual pop pop, boom boom all evening. And then there is a massive KABOOM from the foothills. We felt it as much as heard it.
It seemed deathly quiet for a few moments, and then every vehicle siren in town went off, and headed for the foothills. I never did hear what they found, but it must have been at least a partial stick of dynamite.
@blaineg several years back a bunch of us got together at a friend’s house to set off fireworks for the 4th.
I have no idea why I thought this would be cool, but I set a “48 color Pearl” firework on top of the tube we were using to launch artillery shells. This is basically a bunch of individual Roman candles bundled together into about a 5 inch circle, and I placed it atop a 1-1/2 inch piece of cardboard tube. Because somehow it would be cooler if those fireballs launched from a foot off the street instead of from the street itself.
Of course the first chamber to go off would be the one closest to the fuse, which would naturally be closest to us spectators. So the first shot upends the thing, off the tube, onto the street, facing us and the house.
The delay between the first and second shot felt like several minutes in one of those dreams where you can only move in slow motion. The next shot fired directly into the group. It also set the whole firework spinning like a top, so that 46 more cheery colorful fireballs went out at approximately strike zone level in every direction. Havoc ensued.
The one casualty I remember was my friend’s old girlfriend, whose sweatpants were set afire by a green fireball and, being nylon, melted onto her leg. He heard no end of it and had to leave early (tbh, she was not fun to listen to when things were going well, so listening to her berate him for her having been set aflame was a real treat). I felt bad, but kinda not as bad as if it had been someone completely innocent.
Overall, I’d rate it 10/10, would do again if I had a blast shield and a whole group of people I didn’t like.
@blaineg One summer (maybe mid 60’s or so) we did July 4th with friends in St Louis. The adults were all firing off firecrackers and bottle rockets and the odd roman candle in the street when the police came by and told us in no uncertain terms to cut that shit out.
Well, there was still a good bit left to shoot off, so what could they do but take them into the basement to fire off the rest!
Yes, I believe alcohol was involved.
@blaineg @djslack I can still remember coming home with tiny holes in our clothing and melted into the webbing of the lawn chairs after most of our July 4th parties when I was younger.
Oh and inevitable asshat the threw one (or several) into the BBQ … burgers just don’t taste the same with bits of paper and gunpowder residue on them…
Oh, one more good one, in a different vein. We were using a glass (remember them?) pop bottle (7-Up, I think) to launch bottle rockets. After everything is done, we clean up the mess, and drop the bottle in the sink.
Later that night my mom (who is notorious for not wasting ANYTHING) sees a pop bottle with an inch of liquid in the bottom, and decides to finish it off. Instead of some flat 7-Up, she gets a swig of bottle rocket smoke and cinders. Ewww!
@blaineg I had forgotten about using pop bottles for that. We used to shoot them off from the top of the hill at my grandmother’s farm using pop bottles. That was always fun. Thanks for reminding me of that.
Bottle rocket street fights are the best, followed closely by Roman candle mortors. Don’t try this at my home, kids.
Love to go see fireworks, but stop shooting that shit at my house!
@mfladd Who says education has to be expensive?
Well, not counting medical treatment.
Veterans with PTSD have a harder time with fireworks that dogs do. My dog won’t go potty outside if one firecracker goes off and my husband is reliving the Tet invasion as he hides in a dark corner. If you have to shoot fireworks at least hold it to two nights, i.e. NY Eve and NY night or July 3rd and 4th. Every night for two weeks is to much.
@tngrannyd PTSD is a horrible thing and I wish no one suffered through those thoughts/feelings. Thank you and your husband for your time and service
/giphy salute
@tinamarie1974 And thank you for the salute.
Ah, life , liberty and the pursuit of overindulgence. Let’s eat too much, drink too much, spend too much and then at the end of the day set off enough fireworks in one cul du sac to bring back memories of the fall of Saigon! That’s America, Baby! Sure people get hurt and property gets burned but that’s all part of the fun. Hold my beer and watch this!
Problem I’m my neighborhood is the idiots shooting guns into the air. I live in a city. Last year some dolt gave their kid the gun, and he shot up a neighbor’s house. Police refused to do anything because no one was hurt. They had plaster all over their living room.
@Wimateeka That incident was at the very least Reckless Endangerment. If there is the POSSIBILITY that someone could have been injured or killed, it is Reckless Endangerment.
@Wimateeka That’s how it was around the house I recently moved out of. Lived there for 20 odd yrs. Lotta guns going off. But, most houses were basically about 1/2 mile apart at least so never any probs that I’d ever heard of.
@tngrannyd @Wimateeka Locally it is a crime to shoot into a residence. Same with a vehicle
i really enjoy watching fireworks. i can see three or four displays from inside my apartment on the fourth, which is great. however i also live in a neighborhood where as soon as the weather gets warm everyone seems compelled to go outside at random times in the middle of the night and light one or two off, every night until winter. it’s just weird, like some compulsion that lies dormant until the temps get above 70F. i don’t mean like lighting a bunch off during or after a party or a bbq, but like one person lighting off one firework at 230am on a tuesday. i’m not really fazed by it, i just can’t really understand it.
@jerk_nugget Beer o’clock?
I enjoy watching professional fireworks displays and can see two or three from the roof on the 4th. Unfortunately although the dog is not bothered by them (or thunder) it would bother me to have him on the roof and it bothers him for me to be on the roof without him, so we usually go outside and listen to the fireworks while watching the fireflies.
My favorite fireworks story is from many many years ago when my brother brought up a sack of the good stuff from SC and my uncle, who was mayor of his town at the time, insisted on having us over to liven up the old graveyard across the street from his house. Bro’ had invested in some pretty impressive pyrotechnics, and I lit one of the rockets and was walking back to join the relatives, who were standing back by the graves of our earliest paternal-line ancestors in the New World, when the rocket ignited, fell over, and shot right at me. I cleared a gravestone with a standing broad jump and happily it was sturdy enough to withstand the blast but that pretty much ended my interest in backyard fireworks displays.
@aetris Cool story bro. My fireworks story is one year I was up at the lake on the shore of a pretty big cove that was jammed with boats, all us there to watch some professionals shoot off some from a boat in the middle. Somehow an error was made and the boat caught on fire. Due to the packed in nature of everybody not much could be done and it burned down. to the water line.
@therealjrn - Aw, man! You mean there wasn’t a
/giphy titanic explosion ?
@aetris @therealjrn well that is horrible. Was everyone ok
@aetris I was about 11 or 12. I was hoping…but they were able to at least get/jump off with the munitions. It was hard to tell at night, in the dark from the shore. The yacht club changed their policy to restrict the boats in future years.
@aetris @tinamarie1974 Yeah, sure, they just got off the boat.
Oh! You mean the rocket! Here’s a better quality video.
http://stock.mrfootage.com/play.php?cn=42198
@aetris @tinamarie1974
Yup! My Dad told me everybody got out safely. I remember because it happened the same afternoon he got back from taking our dog to a nice farm in the country where she could just play & play & chase rabbits all day long!
@aetris @therealjrn tough day
@aetris @therealjrn It’s a Titan 1 launch in 1959 so unmanned. Here’s a pretty video.
The single best was July 3 anchored by the Statue of Liberty (working on a 130’ schooner) and watched fireworks from the boat with nothing obstructing the view (they did them 2 nights in a row).
The other “best” fireworks times I have had have been on tall ships - New York City (both from the boat and once took passengers to some waterfront park area with a fort?? that was an absolute crush of people - I think it was called Battery Park?). They were shot off from fireboats pulling barges and then at the end the fireboats shoot colored (red white and blue) water into the air.
Each 4th of July on a schooner or brigantine we’d be part of the parade of sail. One year I was a guest on the Uruguay’s Navy class A (eg one of the “big” ones) tall ship.That was amazing!
Some good ones from the boat in Boston Harbor, Norfolk Harbor (although the wind was blowing one year and we had to climb all over the rigging to remove hot embers), and Atlantic City Harbor.
One kind of cool time was flying across the country July 4th headed west at night and flying over multiple city’s fireworks. They look so small then. Flew closer to them coming into land at Salt Lake City to change planes.
I got to see the fireworks for Bastille Day once as a teenager. In that big park in central Paris, standing about 100 yards from the Eiffel Tower.
The French do that up nicely.
NYC always has lots of street fireworks leading up to New Year’s and to Chinese New Year’s.
Yeah it’s annoying, esp at 3am.
But they really do up the 4th. NYC has displays all along the water, so wherever you are, if you can get to near the water, or up high, you stand a pretty good chance of being able to see some great stuff.
/image Paris fireworks
/image Statue of Liberty fireworks
@f00l Yes the NYC fireworks are spectacular. My best view ever of them was the year we were anchored off of the Statue of Liberty with an unobstructed view. Incredible.
I like 'em if I’m somewhere where I can watch a good display but not going out of my way to see them anymore. Grew up watching the Sikorsky’s display which was pretty good.
@cinoclav nice
@cinoclav I’m going over to Facebook and post this right now, as a reminder to folks. I don’t much care for fireworks, and I hate crowds, so I haven’t been to a display in years. Every single year there’s at least two or three “Have you seen our dog?” posts by locals, and it makes me sad.
When I was a girl, there were three-legged races, and watermelon eating contests, and other kinds of fun. The fireworks at the end lasted perhaps ten minutes, and I usually slept through it. Those were fun days.
@Shrdlu That’s actually where I got it from. When we had dogs, one didn’t really care about anything, the other would go a little crazy when he heard fireworks.
@cinoclav @Shrdlu
Thru my childhood and teenage years I thought fireworks were lots of fun. Up at and including M-80’s. I suppose we didn’t take the risks seriously.
But we never set them off at the house or in the neighborhood. We always went to a big concrete parking lot. No chance of setting dry grass on fire that way.
I never heard them in my neighborhood or near houses, except for a few occasional black cat firecrackers. These activities were quickly squelched by local adults. (At a time when the local communities had strongish personal bonds).
Now, I enjoy the professional displays. As long as I don’t have to deal with crowds to see them.
Protip: 2 sawhorses and a sheet of plywood or an old door. A cordless screwdriver/drill, a bag of 1"-2" wood screws, and a fireplace lighter or a bunch of punks.
Buy only shells, the kits with a dozen shells and a tube or two. Minimize $/shell is your guide here. Max shells per dollar is the goal.
Pull all if the shells into a bucket.
Take a bag of short wood screws and screw down the mortar tubes all along the perimeter of the door/plywood sheet.
Rules are simple:
You load 'em, you get to light 'em.
The local permanent fireworks place can get you down to $1/shell. So a $300 budget gets you about 300 shells.
Even if you’re able to setup 10 and fire them off in a minute, thats a half hour of non-stop shells and oohs and ahhhs. You’ll get tired of loading and lighting, and you can work in shifts loading one side while firing off the other side. Keep extra tubes in case of failures or blowouts. Just tear it off and screw down another one.
Remember, you load 'em, you light 'em.
Best bang for your buck show in town.
We’re now in the wind down from the 4th. We’ll get a week, maybe two at the outside, lull, then it will be the ramp up for the 24th of July. It’s the commemoration of the first pioneer group entering the Salt Lake valley in 1847.
So twice a month, every July. Fireworks stands must love Utah.