fourth of july has always been one of my favorite holidays. there’s nothing like a holiday where huge explosions are mandatory. i’ve always been enthralled by fireworks, and pretty soon, just watching them wasn’t enough. i wanted to blow them up myself. unfortunately, fireworks are illegal in california. well, for the most part. but certain cities, do allow the sale of “safe and sane” fireworks during the month of july. shweet!
so, year after year, my cousin and i would drive out to newark and buy a crapload of fireworks to light off. it was so cool! of course, lighting these fireworks was only legal in the cities that we bought them in, so we would sometimes get busted by the police. one time we were lighting stuff off in front of a synagogue, when a cop car pulled up. uh-oh! unfortunately, we had just lit a large firework, one of the kind that keeps going on and on for like 5 minutes!! doh! needless to say, the cop was kinda pissed.
this year, we were hoping not to have to battle w/ the law. we heard that there was this beach in santa cruz where people lit off all sorts of fireworks, so we decided to go down there. dude. it was NUTS. people there had stuff wayyyy crazier than the “safe and sane” crap we had. they had insane rockets and mortars etc that fired off into the sky. the beach was packed w/ people shooting this stuff off. so basically we were constantly watching tons of amazing fireworks in all directions. imagine the best fireworks show ever, multiply that by 20. of course, it was a little sketchy too. a lot of these people were totally drunk and reckless. some of them would shoot fireworks towards large crowds of people. i was definitely worried that all of this could end quite badly… but luckily no one (that we know) got hurt.
next year i wont be here for the 4th, but the following year, dayum, i need to get my hands on some of them crazy fireworks!
*v