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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