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Fireworks are ominous?
Posted by Anok • 7/04/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: 4th, chaos, fireworks
Well, tonight is the 4th and so there is of course a bustle of activity all over the city. Every year I get the same knot in my stomach as the night progresses. It's a weird feeling - an ominous feeling. And I do know why, but it's just odd at the same time.
First and foremost, I get nervous because you have a lot of people who have been drinking, and then decide to light off fireworks in their yards. Having grown up under the watchful eye of firefighters, I automatically wince at the notion of the drunken launching of explosive devices so close to flammable buildings....
Plus, although the 4th fireworks is not the main event here (we have a week long thing, and next weekend is the BIG event) they still do a small show for the public - people get drunk, and then flood the streets afterwards. WHich is dangerous.
Then there is the main event - I had always enjoyed it until I lived in the part of the city where it all went down for real. When I was younger, it was all very exciting, but as I've grown older I've witnessed more and more mayhem unfold after the event was over. In my early and mid 20's it was still exciting, even the fights that broke out in the respectable establishments - but after living in the thick of it I've decided to pass on the events in future years.
It is quite literally chaos. Violent chaos. I've watched fistfights turn into riots, seen drive-by shootings, stabbings, robberies....one year I had walked back to my apartment to use the restroom quickly, and literally watched a group of people stop a moving vehicle, pull out a passenger, and beat the snot out of them. Right in front of my apartment, AND in front of a cop (who did nothing).
People bottleneck trying to get out of the city at a frantic pace. SOme people have their little children with them, and then you have the college aged crowd drunk as all get out acting like Maniacs - it's a recipe for disaster. Even where I live now, you have streams of people all over the streets, around your house, walking all over the place yelling, crying, screaming laughing - you see vandalism and fights...It's a very uncomfortable feeling, particularly when you are unaccustomed to so much loud activity so late at night.
But it's more than just the noise factor - the sheer amount of people - many who have been drinking all day - just crawling all ove rthe place, some who are destructive.
maybe I'm just getting old, but I no longer find it exciting - just ominous.
Hmmm :/
User Comments
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I frankly hate fireworks. I'm toughing it out now, and I'll be glad when it's over.
Another thing - fireworks can be deadly for our animal friends. Every year animal shelters have gear for the increase in animals that ran off and got lost, or worse yet - seriously injured or killed themselves trying to get away from the frightening noises and lights. It just makes me sick to think about someone's poor dog or cat, dying along and in fear, because of all the yay-hoos out there acting like idjuts with fireworks
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I know that feeling. Although we don't celebrate 4th of July here, the activity escalates in New Year.THIS is where things happen. You get people brought to hospitals because some guy fired a gun as substitute for fireworks. -
Like a lot of things, I wish you could attach a breathalyzer or an IQ test to fireworks before you were allowed to use them. Unfortunately, that's not the case.-
that's because very few would ever get used
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Guy Fawkes Night was an annual event, celebrating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of 5th November, 1605. That was the crisis in Britain in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. The Catholic conspirators were tortured, hung, drawn and quartered in a barbaric fashion.
Every 5th of November, children in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the British Commonwealth were allowed to stay up late, to throw a "guy" on enormous bonfires and to watch the fireworks let off by their own father or by another father in the street. That night was the absolute highlight of children's lives.
Eventually the Australian government banned the sale of fireworks because some man had his eye blown out by a penny cracker, or some children stuck crackers up their cat's bum and frightened the poor beast to death. Guy Fawkes Night bonfires promptly ceased because, without fireworks, the celebrations were meaningless
Although as an adult I am embarrassed that we treated the Catholics so outrageously, I am still sad we lost a wonderful children's party. -
- I am not a fireworks fan. Fireworks have no useful purpose other than entertainment. They are dangerous and give rise to an array of safety issues. They are a fire hazard everywhere, and especially in forested areas like where I live. They always frighten and sometimes injure wildlife, birds and pets, and they are an noise annoyance to many people. Every year people are injured by fireworks and most of the injured seem to be children, therefore, I see in redeeming value in them whatsoever.
Here in British Columbia we have both provincial and municipal legislation in place to control who can purchase fireworks and when and where they can be used. However, if I had my way they would be banned. Every year we experience them being fired off in places they are not allowed by teenagers, who don't seem to give a dang if they cause a fire, terrify or harm an animal, or annoy people who are sleeping.
Where I live citizens have become very tough and very vocal against fireworks (a forested island). We find out who these teens are tossing lit firecrackers onto the roads for "fun" and we turn them into the RCMP. Then their parents can argue with the police about how they got the dang things in the first place, and the adults who provided the fireworks to the kids can be charged and fined. tinyurl.com/nb6g24 -
We just lit fireworks at my brother's last night. We try hard to be reponsible about it though. The kids were several yards from where they were being lit. Only my husband and sister in law lit them and none of us drink. That's just stupidity. We got home safely and all was good. -
Oh wow - sorry I didn't reply to anyone - I forgot that I had started this thread
Don't get me wrong guys, I do like fireworks in that when done responsibly, I think they're beautiful and fun - once in a while. It's just the mayhem it causes afterwards - it's as if everyone all of a sudden has license to act like a maniac simply because it's a holiday weekend.
Although I do agree with the concern about fireworks - the large displays are often short (15 minutes) and are done by professionals out in an area where there is nothing to burn (on the water). The pro displays are no louder than a thunderstorm, so that's OK to me. It's the drunken debauchery that makes me nervous! -
I'm just thankful to live in a neighborhood where people shoot off fireworks...not acutal guns. Bullets have to land somewhere.... When I was a kid we used to have to put pots over our heads because it was so common for bullets to come in through your roof.-
I've lived in those neighborhoods, too. I would agree if it was just fireworks, but the overall tone of the week/weekend gets just as violent a sthe violent neighborhood I used to live in. Which is why I moved!
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As soon as someone says, "Hey y'all, watch this," immediately dial 911. Somebody's gonna get hurt. -
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I don't mind fireworks.
But, I live in a neighborhood that has too many door-to-door Bible thumpers. That is ominous.-
do they thump each others doors?
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That is funny, dcarroll
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I love going to see the big fireworks shows (Chicago has a spectacular show every year) but I hate it when the neighbors set off fireworks. Some jerks were setting off fireworks until after 1am on Saturday and my poor little kitty was hiding under the bed the entire time. Too terrified to come out because of the booming noises.
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Yeah, that's just annoying.
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I used to live in the ghetto of Kelso, WA. People would set off fireworks at random year round...
...or were those gunhots...? -
I feel like a Grandad with fireworks - we have Guy Fawkes on november the 4th to celebrate some dude who tried to blow up the british government building or some nonsense like that.
But of course the fireworks go off all night long starting the week before and up to a month after the actual day - and of course you get some yobbos that decide to do it at 4am in the morning and they all yahoo and the girls scream like they're being murdered. It just makes people go ape sh!t and irresponsible that time of year.
And I sit there in a grump on the couch having to turn the tv up so that I can hear my serials-
kind of brings new meaning to "Gunpowder Rebellion"
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Exactly
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On a side note, apparently the Chicago PD are doing a PR white wash on violence at the Taste of Chicago and July 3rd Fireworks spectacular.
For those of you not from Chicago, the Taste is the largest 7 day street festival in Chicago's Grant Park with hundreds of restaurant booths, and daily concerts all day long at multiple stages. It draws thousands of visitors every year and last year, with a gang turf war going on in Chicago's south side, it had a record # of arrests. So this year, the Chicago PD is trying to play down the 31 arrests on July 3rd (gang violence again) and trying to convince people that everything was under control. NPR and the Chicago press is not biting.-
wow... it's really going to heck now that Barry has moved on to bigger and better things
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Who is Barry?
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Barack
he was appearently known as Barry during his pre-Harvard days--as per "Dreams of My Father" -
Ah, I think Barack didn't have as much influence on Chicago as Mayor Daley (or His Highness Da Mayor).
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I love fireworks. The bigger the boom, the better. Best places to go and light fireworks in California are Pismo Beach and Lake Tahoe. It's an amazing festival of mortar launching. Police don't even try and crack down even though mortars are illegal in Cali. Great places to go with a whole bunch of friends. -
I like fireworks. This Sunday (12th) is our fireworks show. Was always a nice display, Larry Holmes usually donated all the fireworks, they close the bridge for people to stand on it and it is enjoyable. People that have beef fight around here on any given day, town things like the fireworks is typically less eventful except for the ones who used to jump off the iron rail bridge and not make it or the ones that sit on the railroad tracks and wave to the conductor before getting hit by the train. That hasn't happened lately tho.
On Saturday I could see fireworks from anywhere I sat outside my house whether it was the back deck or the sidewalk out front. But I live in a town where you can buy fireworks 10 minutes away and the cops are not so worried about the launching of fireworks in people's yards. As long as there is no complaints or injuries they pretty much let you be. And yes there is a great amount of alcohol and fireworks in my town around the 4th. Dangerous? You bet but I still enjoy watching them. I live right next to 1 of our firehouses and can hear the fire trucks coming and going (many times without sirens) but on Saturday night I heard a couple cop cars, then an ambulance, the firetruck leave and then watched medivac land about a 1/4 mile from my house. This was from my back deck which you can't even see the road. When my friends at the firehouse came back after medivac left the first thing I text them was "Let me guess a drunk blew his hand off?" as it would be anybody's guess that lives here. No it was a bad fight. It was amazing how many people continued to light the fireworks with medivac landing so close but it didn't stop them! -
OK now I got a weird feeling. I posted above about the people who sit on our train tracks and wave to the conductor before getting hit, tho not all of them wave but many have been hit by this train on purpose. Anyway the weird part is shortly after posting I heard a train(it crosses under my road about 50 ft away from my house), then another train, then sirens and more sirens. I then realized that somebody had jumped off the train bridge just before the train came (yup the one that they all use, 50 ft from me ) and medivac was called in.
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Oh
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