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Post by nondescript spice on Jun 29, 2013 19:51:57 GMT -5
does your town do a big production with fireworks every july 4th? do you go?
there is one in the next town that is pretty big - i've heard we get people who are - gasp - not local that come to see it. it goes on for about half an hour, some impressive 'splosions, set in time to music on a local radio station. you have to go super early to get a decent parking space and a good place to situation yourself to see the show. people bring lawn chairs, picnic blankets, coolers, etc. they're great as long as you don't mind about 30 minutes of gridlock afterward.
in my town they have them at the ball park where our minor league team plays. but other than that, you can hear them all over town. i always feel sorry for everyone's pets this time of year. a local vet started advertising thundershirts about a month ago. i know on the fourth i can sit out on my front steps and see some that aren't obscured by trees. otherwise, it will sound like downtown baghdad from this weekend until...well, the end of the summer.
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Post by Frameous on Jun 29, 2013 20:17:31 GMT -5
My home town does a show and I never go. I'm usually busy blowing my own stuff up and always have been. Even when some of my family wants to go into town and see the show, my brother and I usually stay behind and do our own thing. Growing up, we always did the 4th at my grandparents, which is out in the sticks. My grandpa would always buy an arsenal for us kids, so I was raised among the dangers of fireworks use. There's a funny story that took place before I was born where one of my cousins dropped a lit punk in a box of fireworks and the garage went kaboom. Wish I had been there for that one. When I was young, I lit the wrong end of a single Black Cat and it blew up in my hand. It burned and my ears rang like hell, but that's been the only incident I've ever had. One of my sisters lit a fist full of metal sparklers and for a minute there we had Ol Lady Liberty before us in the flesh, torch and all. It burned her pretty bad, but no hospital trips came of it. These are the same metal sparklers that you can fuse together to make a small bomb (don't try this at home, kids).
Anyway, the land around my grandparents has since been developed and some wealthy types live in a number of McMansions nearby. It spoiled the scenery for sure, but these highfalutin big wigs don't skimp on their own personal fireworks. The stuff they get is what the pros use, and watching them do their thing is as good as going to the town park and seeing a bunch of asshats you grew up with that you'd just as soon spit on than say hi. So between them, and my own antics, I'm usually content as far as fire works go. I've seen some shows at a ball game or two, and they are fun and impressive. But when it comes to the 4th, I'd much rather be the one sending my own rockets into the night's sky. With the exception of last year, where we were so dry there was a burn ban, and it sucked. Without fireworks, it hardly felt like Independence Day.
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Post by Crowfan on Jun 30, 2013 7:18:38 GMT -5
Arlington Park Racetrack has fireworks every year, but I never go, usually cause I work early in the morning. We also have this festival called "Frontier Days" or I've also seen it called "Festival Days" where it's like a carnival in Recreation Park. They have rides, games, they get rock bands and stuff, and it makes the whole town a total zoo.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2013 21:22:28 GMT -5
I lived out in Alberta from '89-'11 where fireworks weren't allowed. Now back in Ontario I look at the fireworks packages and think "why would I want to watch 50 bucks go up in smoke?" Anyway tomorrow is Canada Day, July 1, formerly known as Dominion Day celebrating Confederation in 1867.
I'll be going to the Fanshawe Pioneer Village and spend time visiting all the old timey buildings and the old timey people and hopefully having a piece of Canada sheet cake. One of the big fireworks displays is about a 20 minute walk from the house so I might just check it out.
And our cat gets real nervous when he hears that stuff going off as well.
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Post by nondescript spice on Jun 30, 2013 22:16:20 GMT -5
i don't know if you could get your cat into a thundershirt, but they do help. my sister swears by them. i mean, she doesn't wear them. her dog does. her dog.
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Post by crowschmo on Jun 30, 2013 22:34:33 GMT -5
I live in a beach town on Long Island Sound, so we get QUITE the crowd in our 'berg. There's a carnival at one of the churches near the beach that always has their carnival for the week of the 4th so people pop over there for that, too, though the carnivals kind of suck these days and aren't as good as the ones I remember as a kid. (Of course, I WAS a kid, so maybe the memories are better than reality). There's usually a concert beforehand, but I usually don't go to that, and a local radio station sets up and plays music when the fireworks start that broadcast on their station. (Our fireworks are always on the 3rd unless it rains, so people can go to the ones in New Haven on the 4th as well). It's VERY crowded, thousands show up, people park their RV's on side streets and sit on the roofs. The beach is loaded. We usually have pretty good fireworks, though last year they were kind of blah. They just kept sending the same kind up over and over (the big ones that look like dandelion heads). There was no variety. Other people on the beach are usually setting their own off at the same time as the town's ones go off, so you have to look everywhere at once. And you can see another town's going off across the water.
One year was very good (I guess they had good funding that year, or a different group setting them off), and they had the smiley-faces and the peace signs and ones that swiggled all over the place and stuff. One year the smoke was so bad that if you were watching them from one side, they looked fine, but if you were unfortunate enough to be viewing them from the other side, you didn't see them at ALL. I was like, "uh, did they START them yet?" Then, poof, they were done! Rip-off!
The house my family used to live in, we could just walk to the beach it was like just across the street pretty much, and when I was on the third floor, I could see them from my window. Now at my new house, I have to take the car and I usually just park in my sister's driveway and walk a couple of blocks to the beach for a spot. Leaving the scene is a NIGHTMARE. The crowd is everywhere and walking all over the place. Then I just sit in my car for a minute or two before setting out for home (my sister usually is at a picnic at a friend's house who also lives near the beach, so I just use her driveway). People are setting off fireworks left and right in the streets and they don't give a rat's ass if a car is going by. And people walking in the street to get home or get to their cars don't care, either. They don't MOVE, they just walk in the street, la-di-da, who cares if there's a car behind me, la la la. Jerks. (They could walk single file more toward the curb, it wouldn't put them out).
A guy who lives on the street perpendicular to us usually sets off fireworks. The street kind of has an island in the middle that it goes around and he sets them off from there (and usually has a party on his lawn with music playing) and he usually sets them off on the 4th, so I get to see those even if I go to the town's display. His are actually even better than the town's. They're not quite as big, but there's more variety to them. Though, he didn't do them last year (maybe no money to do it). Edit: Actually, it's a few households who pool their money.
I enjoy the 4th.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Edit: By the way, my nutso cat LIKES thunder storms and fireworks and all kinds of excitement. He sits near the house and just watches the wild weather and doesn't come running in when fireworks go off or anything. A paper bag rustling makes him nervous, however. Go figure.
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Post by nondescript spice on Jul 1, 2013 15:18:10 GMT -5
I lived out in Alberta from '89-'11 where fireworks weren't allowed. Now back in Ontario I look at the fireworks packages and think "why would I want to watch 50 bucks go up in smoke?" Anyway tomorrow is Canada Day, July 1, formerly known as Dominion Day celebrating Confederation in 1867. I'll be going to the Fanshawe Pioneer Village and spend time visiting all the old timey buildings and the old timey people and hopefully having a piece of Canada sheet cake. One of the big fireworks displays is about a 20 minute walk from the house so I might just check it out. And our cat gets real nervous when he hears that stuff going off as well. happy canada day, eh?
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Post by Crowfan on Jul 1, 2013 15:33:17 GMT -5
i don't know if you could get your cat into a thundershirt, but they do help. my sister swears by them. i mean, she doesn't wear them. her dog does. her dog. I've heard that those thundershirts really do work.
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Post by nondescript spice on Jul 4, 2013 21:11:51 GMT -5
even though it has been raining on and off for a couple of days, people are still shooting off fireworks all over my town. i actually heard them start up before ten this morning. i've been a little nervous this evening, because in the house directly across the street from me, there have been a few guys sitting in a garage, shooting off the really big stuff - my windows have been rattling. haven't seen my cat for hours.
they said the big fireworks gig wouldn't be canceled because of rain unless there was lightning. how can fireworks go off successfully in a steady rain? or better yet - who would sit around in the rain, watching them? it's coming down pretty good at the moment, and they would have started them ten minutes ago.
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Post by afriendlychicken on Jul 4, 2013 21:51:17 GMT -5
Hilo is having it's annual fireworks display over Hilo Bay. I haven't been to one in a long time. There's just way too much drinking, which is illegal on Hawai'i beaches but with so many involved the police pretty much turn a blind eye towards it for this day. And with between 5,000-10,000 people usually showing up there's always some major accident. The last time I watched the event I was one car away from a bad accident. That was it. I was never going to be on the road again on July 4th, or any holiday for that matter because all holidays here are treated as a party day, even holidays like Memorial Day. We do have the highest drunk driver accident rate in the country per capita.
As for fireworks, Hawai'i residents don't do too much of that on the fourth. New Years Eve on the other hand is hugely celebrated with noise. Up until the middle 90's firecrackers and most fireworks were legal. I remember when I was young back in the 70s that on New Years Eve you could pop and shoot off fireworks all day long and from about 11:15pm to 12:30am on New Years Day it became white noise at about 90 decibels. It was mind numbing. And since I don't like load noises...
I now stay at home and watch the Boston Pops Fireworks show. Oh look at all those colors!
'Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard.'
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Post by nondescript spice on Jul 4, 2013 22:40:40 GMT -5
five to ten thousand people?? yikes, that's waaay too much for me. i feel kind of bad for saying it, but after so many minutes, i get bored with fireworks. i watched a few minutes of the special they show every year from new york, and though they are impressive, after a few minutes i'm ready to move on.
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Post by afriendlychicken on Jul 5, 2013 0:25:18 GMT -5
Same here. I'm usually paying more attention to what song they're trying to time the BOOMS to. I prefer the use of classical music. The one I enjoyed the most was a display one year timed with the last movement of Leos Janacek's 'Sinfonietta.'
It's so much better than the overused Tchaikovsky '1812 Overture.'
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Post by Crowfan on Jul 5, 2013 5:30:37 GMT -5
I'm so glad I boarded Brett for the 4th. This year, it seems every asshat in the town was shooting off fireworks, which are illegal in IL, btw.
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Post by Mod City on Jul 5, 2013 13:50:42 GMT -5
Residents of South Dakota are raised with near-weapons-grade fireworks from youth, so if the local municipality isn't doing a display, chances are every one of your neighbors is. Last night was no different. My community does a professional show following the amateur baseball game on the Sunday night nearest the Fourth, so that's coming up this weekend, but last night there were some nice displays we could watch from my back yard.
I like the Fourth but wish I didn't have to work every year. I've worked that holiday for 11 years straight now.
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Post by Crowfan on Jul 5, 2013 14:36:40 GMT -5
My sister and her husband used to live in Rapid City, and they were bummed because that part of South Dakota was in an extreme drought. Her husband is in the Air Force and was stationed at Ellsworth. Anyway, he got PCS'd to Germany, so they just moved there, to Ramstein AFB and they got to see fireworks there.
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