Tag: fireworks

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Happy Independence Day!

Welcome to the 4th of July were the U.S.A. celebrates it’s independence from the tyranny of the United Kingdom with a Chinese tradition — fireworks. It’s also the one day of the year where you can have an open beer in your hand before noon and no one looks at you funny. Many of you will be going down to Crissy Field or Fisherman’s Wharf with the thousands of others to be crowded together to watch the fun. I will not.

I did the Crissy Field thing once and while it was fun there were too many people drinking too much to get in a portapotty to give back the beer and afterwards the drive out was so slow that I have to say I have never seen so many people jumping out of their cars and running off to the side of the road to pee. Nope, I’m not going to drive through a river of hot urine just watch some fireworks. There’s plenty of other places to see them minus the urine and drunkards.

The first thing is you need to get high. No I’m not talking about smoking pot, but get as high up in the air as you can. Twin Peaks is a good place as you can see Crissy Field as well as Oakland and Union City’s shows. This place does get a little crowded though so get there early. Oddly enough on a warmish day like today when you go up there at night the heat of the day rises so be prepared to have shorts and tank top handy as San Francisco radiates back all the heat of the day.

Grandview Park is another good place in the Inner Sunset and you only have to walk partly up the steps to see it. This was our usual place, but tonight I think I’m going to try the Northwest corner of the Sunset Reservoir. I’ve heard lots of people recommend it and it’s closer to my house. The parking in all these other places is much easier to get in and out of and they’re also nice if you have kids that are scared by the loud banging.

Fisherman’s Wharf I did one year which is a good place if you want to get closer without being boxed in at Crissy Field. You can even hop on the Metro and enjoy the fireworks from the Embarcadero and if you’re quick you can hop back on to before the rest of the crowd does.

If you want an alternative fireworks festival go down to Ocean Beach. The outer Sunset and Richmond district seem to have a number of pyrophiliacs and while not as big as the Crissy field show there are still some pretty big rockets going up in the air out here. I do remember one year there was an older Chinese man with his granddaughter set up at the school yard of A. P. Gianinni Junior High that was sending up some definitely not safe and sane stuff that was pretty impressive. He was there for over an hour. Local schoolyards seem to be a hit or miss attraction for people. The police generally leave you alone there unless you’re tossing M-80’s around because there isn’t too much to burn on the asphalt play areas. The good old days of driving to Daly City to buy your own fireworks are pretty much gone. I’m not sure if Pacifica is still selling the old Red Devil fireworks of my youth, but at least I’ve given you a few ways to see something tonight while you’re eating your burgers and slugging down too many beers.

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The Aftermath…

Yesterday was the day we chose to celebrate the US unfollowing George III. So how did we all fare? Well from accounts of friends and family no one blew a hand off not even my friend Nikolai, the mad Russian who plays with fireworks like most of us played with toy trains as kids.

I noticed something this year that I hadn’t noticed in years previous. If you’re out in the Sunset at least [not sure about the rest of the city] you don’t really need to take a trip down to Crissy Field to watch fireworks. All you need to do it walk out into your backyard or peer out the window from any high point in your house to enjoy the show. Last night was pretty spectacular.

While the noise ran all day it didn’t really get started until around 6pm when we started to hear the M-80’s and bigger going off. They are always used to start the evening around here because they aren’t much to see, but they let everyone in a four mile radius know you’re there. These are usually accompanied by a few bottle rockets and the occasional dim bulb who sends up a decent skyrocket before the sun goes down.

The place really starts to get going around 9pm. This is where the surprises came in this year. Our house was rocked several times by what I first thought were sticks of dynamite only to walk outside and see skyrockets that were more bang than flash. These sounded like canons going off and all the car alarms were being triggered. I think my next door neighbor was sitting in his bedroom waiting for the next bang to pull out his keys and turn off the alarm because his car would only beep twice and stop. Close to 10pm is when everything kicks in for the final finale. Down by the beach there were very large shells being launched that rivaled the size of the Crissy Field shells. The only difference was since we’re up on a hill the were exploding at eye level.

If you get out to the Sunset on the Fourth of July probably one of the best places to go is the Northeast corner of the Sunset Reservoir. It’s high enough up and unblocked by most buildings that you get a clear shot down to the beach and all around you. I’m hoping one day when my daughter who slept through the thunder of the fourth starting at 7:30pm will be awake and we can make a trip up to the reservoir to watch the fun. I think she’ll enjoy it a lot.

 

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The Weekend to Blow Sh*t Up

Welcome to the 4th of July weekend. A day where we all drink up and under the influence of alcohol light explosive devices, or in many of our cases the safe and sane fireworks of the Red Devil fireworks company.

The funny thing about this is that San Francisco ever since I can remember has outlawed the sale of even the safe and sane fireworks on top of the unsafe and insane fireworks such as the firecrackers and M80, roman candles, bottle rockets, skyrockets, you know…the fun stuff.

If you wanted to get the legal fireworks you had to go to Daly City at first and now Pacifica to get them. These were always cities with open spaces that were overgrown with weeds that dried out in the summer unlike San Francisco which had very few spaces  with dry weeds that could catch fire.

As a kid I remember my parents always telling me how a bottle rocket that flew up several hundred feet in the air and fell down through the air could land on your roof and set your house on fire. Unfortunately for her no one’s house ever caught fire in this fashion and none of the sparks from the large blasts at Crissy Field ever blew down on anyone’s house to burn it down either.

This got me thinking last night. Why is it that areas with the largest amount burnable material are allowed to sell fireworks, but large cities surrounded by asphalt that doesn’t burn aren’t? Is it a deal that the fireworks companies cut with big cities to get paid off to not sell there and give a kickback to the suburbs?

I honestly don’t know, but at least have some fun this weekend and blow sh*t up.

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Chinese New Year: Where you at?

Gong hay fat choy! I suppose I should be hearing that a lot more lately. My daughter’s pre-school was closed yesterday because of Chinese New Year, so why haven’t I heard anything about it other than a few friends on Facebook mentioning the year of the rabbit.

San Francisco has a huge Chinese population, 60% of the city is in fact Asian and the Sunset District where I hide out is probably even more Asian than that. We used to jokingly call it the “Chinatown Annex“. I even had a friend drive me home many years ago and after a trip down Noriega Street he remarked, “I didn’t know you lived near Chinatown.”

Well, he was from Marin so I can cut him some slack, but every year around Chinese New Year you’ll start hearing the firecrackers going off like it was 4th of July, maybe a few skyrockets that were illegally obtained, the usual. Some of the stores on Noriega, Irving and Taraval will start sprouting up  big red and gold banners and all of the Chinese people you see on the street are smiling.

So what’s up with dat this year? I haven’t heard one firecracker, I don’t see anything in the paper and I have yet to hear of the announcement of the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco on TV or in the newspapers. I don’t hear non-Chinese trying hard to say, “Gong hay fat choy” to Chinese friends or even weirder any one they think is Chinese on the streets. This is the time the Chinese call “tuan yuan” which means reunion. It’s kind of like all the Chinese coming together to celebrate their friendship and families and the fact that they’ve made it through another year successfully. They all exchange red envelopes with gifts of money [not drugs as my father used to think, no really, I’m serious] to each other to show their prosperity. The only place I’ve seen red envelopes for sale was at the health food store I wrote about yesterday.

Well I did read something that may explain the somber tone. Apparently some Chinese think that this might not be the greatest coming year which might usher in terrorist threats, natural disaster, an 89 year old Oakland minister claiming the end of the world on My 21st? What’s next will Brad and Angelina break up because they were married in the year of the rabbit?

Well at least The San Francisco Symphony’s Chinese New Year symphony is sold out, but I don’t even know what date that is or when the Chinese New Year parade is going to be televised. It was always a guarantee around our house that we’d order out from one of our local Chinese Restaurants for the night of the parade and would sit in front of the TV watching while we stuffed ourselves with Kung Pao Chicken, Sweet and Sour Pork, Mongolian Beef, egg rolls, you know all the usual “white people chinese food” 🙂 I did try one of the cakes with a hard boiled egg in it once [which a Chinese friend I was working with couldn’t believe because even he thought they tasted nasty], only once and you well never get me to order jelly fish or sea cucumber from a Chinese restaurant.

Now will somebody please tell me what day the parade is so I know when to order the Chinese food to stuff myself with?