Nerd Pride Radio

So this is the first year I've actually bought fireworks in a long time. We have a friend that lives on property outside city limits. So a bunch of us are going there to barbecue, watch the city's fireworks, and then light off our own.

I stopped at one of those roadside stands (this is just a sample- not the one I stopped at):



They have these in other states where fireworks are legal, right? Is it just a Texas thing?

Anyhow, I gave myself a $50 budget and made it out for $52.30 with tax. I was pretty pleased with that. More pleasing is how many goddamn fireworks you can buy for $50. Did y'all realize this? I'm guessing here, but if my family and I were going to sit back and just light these by ourselves- I'm guessing we'd have a 30 minute show on our hands. And sure there's crappy snappers and stuff- but lots of fountains and cannons.

And, of course, we have roman candles for the traditional roman candle duels.

Safety first, people!

Fireworks are illegal in Maryland, but not in D.C. So booths like that pop up on all of the major roads into DC, just past the border, in the weeks leading up to the 4th.

Any and all fireworks are illegal in New York State, including for some moronic reason, sparklers. I've never seen a stand like that, but we get billboards even in Syracuse, which is 90 minutes north of PA advertising firework megastores over the border in Pennsylvania.

I saw one for a place south of Corning, which is easily a 3 hour drive from Central New York. I bought a couple boxes of sparklers at a gas station in PA last week just to have some for the kids.

They're legal in Nebraska. We probably have 20 or more of these within the City limits for a town of 25,000 people.

In years past we always traveled to my in laws' house, stopping at one or more such huge fireworks selling places on the way. That night a regime of total pyromania seizes the neighborhood and it looks and sounds like a war movie is being filmed. Thick smoke is everywhere. You can buy whatever fireworks you like but they're
expensive. Thousands of dollars is burnt up within an hour in just in this one area, I'm sure. Kids have suffered minor burns and no fucks are given. It's insane. I like fireworks, too, so this isn't me being uptight. But as a kid we had different stuff - more dangerous ladyfingers, on the one hand, but more cheap little stuff like sparkling cones and whistles and parachutes and such. More variety. Now it's all pricey mortar shells. Well... not tonight! I'm hanging out on the porch and it's blissful quiet.

We managed to set three brush fires that were quickly stomped out and doused. But given the dry conditions, we just shot the roman candles up instead of having our second annual July 4th Duel Tournament.

Projectile fireworks (anything that left the ground, like bottle rockets and such) used to be illegal in Michigan but they were legalized several years ago. Now you can see a pretty impressive show as you look across the city sky, but this also means that you can hear them at all hours in the week leading up to the fourth and in the week after. Signs advertising the firework pop up locally for the super-stores across the state border, roughly 2.5 hours away from here, but we don't have any of those stores here in the Grand Rapids area even now. Instead we have a ridiculous number of pop-up tent stores that sell an impressive selection and they are gone again by the 6th of July. The time to buy is on the 5th because everything is buy 1 get 5 or 10 free as they are trying to off-load their inventory, but this then contributes to the noise continuing throughout the week after the 4th.

Anything larger than sparklers and things that spin around on the ground are technically illegal in Illinois, but Indiana is an anything goes state. They don't have those little rinky-dink stands. they have big warehouse stores that are there year round, all situated near the Illinois border it seems.

For the past three nights straight, in our small subdivision with fairly small lots we have had some group of people shooting of REAL fireworks, the kind that make loud booms that sound like artillery when they are going off over your house or make extremely loud sizzling sounds, or occasionally blinding flashes of light, or large blooms of colorful light. They have continued into the wee hours of the morning, well past midnight on Sunday night, Monday night and last night. Two of those days I had to get up the next day to work. On the other, my daughter did. (The restaurant she is working at is located very close to the parade route and got a ton of foot traffic before and after the parade on the 4th. She got a decent amount of tips, even working as the cashier.)

I'm getting a bit tired of it, since they are obviously not legal fireworks and, frankly, dangerous as heck! This is not a neighborhood suited to firing off projectiles in. I'm tired of my windows rattling, damn it... (and the dogs are REALLY tired of it...)