I live in Matawan, NJ a working/middle class community. We’ve got lots of escapees from Staten Island and Brooklyn, NY. Lots of people who have recently worked their way up from the streets and bought their little piece of the American dream. We bought our house 12 years ago for $140K and our town used to have lots of houses in that price range. Something you could actually afford. Matawan is a racially and ethnically diverse community.
Every year our fireworks display is down on Lake Lefforts and naturally the town comes out. The park where we congregate is on the small side and once the display gets started we each have just about enough space for our body and an acceptable buffer so as not to be inappropriately touching your neighbor.
Once the display gets started the whooping, hooting, shouting, yelling, oohing and aahing continue until the show ends. Matawanians react to the their July 4 fireworks.
Last night we were invited to accompany some friends who live in Colts Neck, NJ to their fireworks display. Colts Neck is where Springsteen and Bon Jovi have houses. The average house there is close to $1 million. Colts Neck refused to allow the children at bordering Earl Naval Weapons Station to attend their public schools; they wouldn’t fit in and the children are bused to further away Howell, NJ. Colts Neck is home to as many convicted perpetrators of securities fraud as Washington, DC is to liars. Colts Neck is predominantly white.
Colts Neck’s fireworks display includes some really fancy stuff. Bursts of light that turn into stars and flowers. They have a ground show that includes a waterfall of fireworks and firework eagles. But wouldn’t you know it, hardly a hoot, whoop or ooh and aah. In fact, a crapload of folks left early to avoid the traffic getting out. They missed the big ass blinding, loud as a mofo finale. What a bunch of wussy anti-patriots.
Enver Hoxha former dictator of Albania only takes breaks. He never goes away. Personally I’m hoping Fatos Nano wins the election there, cause that’s a kick ass name and another great obscure avatar to use.
Zumbelli (spelling) the big fireworks maker is right outside of pittsburgh so every year they do the fireworks downtown. Lets just say they go all out. In my opinion the fireworks here are better than the fireworks in DC by a good bit. And all because we are the hometown crowd.
We got home from our camping trip mid-Monday afternoon. When time came for the 'works, we were all wiped out from all that doing nothing all weekend and decided to stay home. Please forgive us.
Last year my girlfriend and I decided to forego a fireworks display. The previous year we sat right in the middle of the Lincoln Memorial steps. So we drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to enjoy the silence of nature instead watching stuff blow up.
We stopped at an east-facing outlook and watched a storm brew on the horizon. Then (and I don’t know why we didn’t see this coming), as it got dark, fireworks started going off all throughout the valley below. And not just fountains and bottlerockets, but big, mortor-type fireworks. It was pretty awesome from so far away and up above it all. And they were spread over such a large area. We didn’t see anything that looked like an organized, fire-marshall sanctioned event, just some good ol’ American mountain folk with West Virginia’s best.
To top it off, the storm on the horizon began flashing every 10 seconds or so with the craziest pink lightning. Definately the best fireworks “display” ever.
edit: Oh yeah, we did the same thing last night, and it was still pretty cool, except it seemed more people had caught onto the idea, and no pink lightning.
You bring back some memories for us. When we were in D.C. and I had a Pentagon parking pass, Mary and I would park at the Pentagon then watch the 'works over the Washington Monument while sitting on the bank of the Potomac. When I was younger, I used to live in W.V. and remember the fireworks displays lighting up valley after valley from high highway perches.
You go to the right country road in Iowa (and I would assume most planes states with a similar population density) and you can see all the neighboring towns doing their fireworks at the same time.
They’ll all be really far away and seperated by massive corn fields, but sometimes you can see (not hear) 3-4 official events at once in a 360 rotation.
Sometimes you are like “I didn’t know there was a town over there!”
we went to the fireworks over the open cut of homestake gold mine in a town not too far away. Anyways, i saw either the coolest firework thing ever or the biggest screw up I’ve ever seen the show was going on, and suddenly a firework blew up inside the open cut, quite a ways below us. That was pretty cool.
also cool were the acoustics. you could hear the echo of the explosions traveling around the circular pit, so it would go on for a long time and come from different places.
Our fireworks are on the 3rd, and everyone comes to see them from all over. we are right on the water, and millions of people go out on there boats and park it in the harbor and watch our display. Its one of the best around, and we always cheer and yell and have a great time. people sit aruond on the beach for hours and get good spots. we have fireworks going off for weeks before and after the 3rd and 4th. Then whats really awesome is on the 4th people normally go down to the beach and watch the rest of the towns across the harbors 'works. its really beautiful. and you can see huge firework displays that each town has right down the harbor line. its awesome.
its awesome.