If you grew up on the west coast, I think you never quite grow accustomed to the east coast thing where every neighborhood sounds like it’s having a moderately disorganized battle each evening for a week around the 4th of July.
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We are apparently the minority. I'm so tired of it. East Coast semi rural Georgian, we also get tannerite explosions. Anyone complaining about noise on the community page gets threatened tannerite next to them and called a liberal. It's Freedom.
Not universally true. Oxnard sounds like a war zone from early June until mid July, and not just small-arms grade. Yesterday afternoon and evening sounded like heavy artillery combat for 8-12 hours.
Oakland last night was a solid wall of explosions for 7 hours. Not sure DC can top it and I recall driving home in DC through smoke so thick it might as well have been fog.
I lived in Sylmar, CA for a few years and we had fireworks all night from early June to late July. My dog lived under the bed for about a month. I live in La Crescenta now and it's just on the 4th.... Haha. Two just went off while I was typing.
Almost 2 weeks before and a few days after in San Pedro. I'm an Okie, and it blew my mind how insane the Angelinos were about their firecrackers. I kind of loved it, and I totally sympathize with folks who hate it.
One of my first vivid memories after moving to the I.E. was going up into the foothills above Rancho Cucamonga with friends and watching endless displays of random fireworks as far as the eye could see.
I thought it was relatively good this year. Some years, its gone on for a month. Then, there was all those years I lived on Canal Street, where there was a very brisk trade in illegal fireworks. The vendors would shoot them off to advertise their wares.
In the eastern part of the SF Bay Area 4th of July is a one month long fireworks extravaganza starting mid June. And the fireworks go off well into the middle of the night. NYE is only 2 weeks long, but just as loud for those two weeks.
If you know, you know (I got it). Plus if you are here, you get to hear the complaints about SeaWorld fireworks all summer. And the randos in the alleys of most of the city. At least those south of the 52.
Last night the fireworks went on non-stop from 8 till at least 2. Last year that kept happening for a week afterwards. It's not just the East Coast anymore.
I grew up on the East Coast and it isn't close to the madness that happens on the 4th in Vancouver, Washington. It is loud and constant and, as long as nothing is set on fire, it great.
As a 16-18 year old living in Vancouver I could finance my whole summer working the two weeks up to July 5th selling fireworks at the tent across from BlackJack just off the highway. They made so much money they didn’t care if you hid from your supervisor and worked 13-hour days for 2 weeks straight
For context for those who don’t know, WA state laws are varied from county/city/etc. but Vancouver’s are very lax, presumably because OR’s laws are much more strict, so pyros from Oregon drive from far and wide to buy fireworks from one specific location in Vancouver.
The place I’m talking about is technically beyond city limits but it still has a Vancouver address. Everything up until Ridgefield and out to Camas was Vancouver to us growing up there in the 90s/00’s.
Alright alright, I give. Most of the west coast is apparently a veritable war zone too. Where I grew up, we had really high wildfire risk, so maybe that’s why my memory isn’t of *all this.*
It's highly variable. I live in East Portland and there's almost nothing a few miles west of me, but go a few miles east and it's the war zone you describe.
On the west side of the river it was pretty bad last night. I'm in Chinatown and the explosions didn't stop until dawn. My poor dog was anxious all night long.
We had almost nothing anywhere close to us, and our cats were freaking out all night. The 4th has actually become an annual family hangout night, everyone chills in the quietest room in the house and we do what we can to keep the vibes mellow.
There has been a significant change due to the pandemic -- canceled fireworks show led to a surplus and then it kept going. Fourth of July always had fireworks, but the week-plus is recent.
I’m visiting family in Arcata and it was a wall of sound from around 7 pm until nearly midnight. During high fire risk, no less. Much worse than Philly.
yeah last night in sf, it sounded like competing fireworks shows but growing up in north/ northeast orange county there was just the one fireworks show and the echoes of disneyland.
I NEVER had to deal with fireworks when I lived on the East Coast. I now live just outside Seattle and there were giant explosions on my street from 4 PM until 2 AM. And they're banned but no one cares and it's not enforced.
Rainier Beach was bad when we lived there but the unincorporated area between the Seattle and Renton city lines is nightmarish. A group set up a giant fireworks installation IN AN INTERSECTION. Not a peep out of KCSO.
We see a lot of family-style groups in the various residential intersections in the South Delridge/White Center area. I am curious about the law enforcement priorities in Seattle proper, because there doesn't seem to be much attention to it.
I am anti-carceral generally, but there needs to be SOME kind of enforcement b/c this is a public safety issue. I reported one last week but they'll just get a letter reminding of them of the laws. I'd like to see fines, or fire departments hosing things down and ruining whatever remains.
I mean, it's hard to get all pissy at people (even though I do) when there are GIANT FIREWORKS STANDS allowed to, legally, sell ALL THE FIREWORKS.
Perhaps we could start there?
It's INSANE around here for the third night in a row. People across the road in the very modest post-war tract homes with junk in the yards sink about a grand into fireworks every damned year. All legal to buy but illegal to set off. 🤔
Nah. NoVa, rural central PA, rural south NJ. (Also Atlanta but I know that doesn't count as "East Coast") One of the few *good* things about the NJ stint was not having to treat July 4 like a war situation--there just weren't any fireworks.
I hear a lot more fireworks out here in Silicon Valley (though the loudest ones are commercial, between cities and Great America) than I did in east-central NJ, but driving to DC in summer as a kid always included seeing a LOT of fireworks stands.
I think there is an implicit assumption that "it's just one night" [note: It ABSOLUTELY is not] and it's not worth either the labor or the bad community relations to enforce. But we have to either be refugees from the noise or drug the whole household to bear it, which is...not ideal.
I live literally a mile from the burn area for the (current) most-destructive wildfire in Colorado. Two-and-a-half years later, you wouldn't know anything happened from how much stuff they were lighting off last night.
I live in a high wildfire-risk area (Western Colorado), and we had jerks firing off professional-grade fireworks ALL night last night. Not just one or two assholes, either. We counted at LEAST 7, and those were just the ones we could see from our front yard.
I think it’s different than when I grew up in 70’s and 80’s. We had the community fireworks and one guy that was really good. Now tomorrow night my sister’s neighbor will have more than enough mayhem. And they won’t be the only ones. More people can get fireworks than back then.
We have a really high wildfire risk and people do it anyway. Our next door neighbor who is a firefighter has PTSD because of two decades of putting out grass fires every fourth.
Don’t recall much in the way of neighborhood frwks as a Bay Area kid. More big official shows & watching Pops back east. Local fireworks tending more toward spinny/whizzy colorful low ground stuff than loud booms. Definitely more concern re setting weeds/etc on fire than v now w/ landscaped yards
New Englander here; personal fireworks were illegal all my life until 10 years ago when we had an R gov & legislature made them legal. They've been much worse, louder & more days, this year. I like big public displays but not this! People must have lots of discretionary $$ to send them up in smoke.
Definitely didn’t have it anywhere I lived in Southern California as a kid. We had some public fireworks obviously but the more spread out nature of the area meant I heard less of those too.
if it helps I grew up on the east coast and don't remember much by way of fireworks in my neighborhood (though many years we went to Kansas to do our own)
Same, I grew up in Mass. and heard kids bragging about setting off cherry bombs but never heard any of them. It was a big deal that we could go to Maine and get sparklers. Nothing like Hawaii which sounds like a war zone from September to February (for New Year's, the 4th isn't such a big thing).
My understanding (also Mass) was always that you could go up to New Hampshire and get pretty much whatever you wanted, but I never knew anyone who did.
I like fireworks, but we always flew out and did them at my Uncle's place in the boonies.
You should spend 4th of July week in northeast Vancouver, WA sometime. While the city itself has a very strict "no fireworks" ordinance, outside the city limit is like a war zone. The smoke doesn't clear for several days, and the burnt / exploded bits of paper pile up in drifts.
Fire works season runs roughly from memorial day to Labor Day in Philadelphia and it’s exhausting. This year is actually the first year since 2020 that hasn’t been quite as relentless, but it’s still not fun. Oh also bullets from guns getting shot into the air because America.
Costa Mesa has been that way since I've lived in Orange County, and it's been spreading to neighboring communities, where they're ostensibly illegal, for a while now. Though it seemed to peak during COVID, and this year has been a bit quieter.
Caught a feral who the shelter said wasn't adoptable by normies. So I picked her up on July 4th. Between the random fireworks, the volunteer fire alarms, & a thunder storm she hasn't eaten yet. She has dry food & I keep changing out the wet food. She cries at night, so I sit w/her. Hate the 4th.
She calms down & then there are random bursts on the block & she's back to super stressed. She bit through the Kevlar glove the person at the shelter was wearing, but she seems OK w/me so far. I'm giving her space while sitting in the same room. Will break out the can of tuna if she doesn't eat tmrw
i dunno man, i just moved to the bay area after a lifetime out east and it never looked like this outside my window (downtown oakland looking towards SF)
That's what Hawaii is like too. People start setting off their New Year stash in September, that goes through Chinese New Year, then there's graduation parties in May/June.
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Perhaps we could start there?
Bans do nothing if the PD won't enforce them. And very few local PDs even make a token effort.
I like fireworks, but we always flew out and did them at my Uncle's place in the boonies.
(Though you can still hear fireworks from the neighbors on the Fourth)
It's been quiet as a tomb tonight.
conflict has been ongoing since early May in south central