Should You Shoot Off Fireworks on the Fourth of July?
No.
People love fireworks. I love fireworks. And if you’ve ever seen a good professional fireworks show you probably love them too. The visuals at least, I could really take or leave the sound. And if you never seen a good professional fireworks show, you absolutely should.
From my own experience, the best I’ve ever seen was 4th of July, 2014, in Washington D.C., pictured above, before the show, before the people arrived. We’d gone to the nation’s capital for a week vacation, primarily to visit the many Smithsonian Museums (we managed to see four and a half of them), but scheduled the week of the 4th so that we could catch the show. And it was an amazing show.
If you don’t spend the duration of a fireworks show staring in awe at the dazzling lights in the sky, either you aren’t a fan of dazzling lights in the sky or it’s a terrible show. And if you don’t like the sound, bring ear plugs or noise canceling headphones.
But good fireworks shows are incredible, and you should seek them out. Many of them are even free!
But what about doing your own fireworks show?
I had a friend with a house on a lake, and a couple of years in a row he went out and bought some very good fireworks, and he also did a bunch of research and set up a mini-show. It wasn’t the best. Even a moderately sized small town probably beat it. But for him, his family, his friends, and those of his neighbors on the lake, it was a pretty good show.
He began by firing off a few singles, which he’d told his neighbors would signify the start of the show so they could come out on their docks to watch. And then he had a couple small series he’d rigged up where it would fire three or five fireworks at once or in sequence to add a little more drama. He ended with a finale of about ten or twelve that worked great together. It was nice.
Importantly, he’d been shooting them from his boat anchored a bit off shore, so that in case of tragedy he could dump the fireworks in the water, or dive in himself to get away.
Other than that one time I attended his lake show, every other time I’ve been to a friends’ setting off fireworks, they’ve been just a trunk load of small to medium stuff they fire off one at a time. Which I suppose is okay if you like making things go boom, but it really lacks in the awe a good fireworks show can deliver.
And someone always gets hurt. No, not like “lose a thumb”, but someone always gets hit by a spark or a bit of falling trash, or someone is flailing around with a sparkler, or someone lights a short fuse and gets the living shit scared out of them when it goes off before they can back away. But sometimes someone does get hurt for real. Every 4th of July ERs get visited by people who did “lose a thumb” or got a really nasty burn or any number of other fireworks related injuries.
Not to mention the mishaps that go viral on social media. Those times when one misfire leads to all the fireworks going off at once while everyone screams and runs for their lives.
Most neighborhoods aren’t a great place for fireworks in any event. One rocket that tips before launching and you could be setting a house on fire. Not to mention lots of people’s pets don’t like the sound. A lot of people also don’t like the sound, which is why they stay home on the Fourth. It could be personal. It could be mental health. But firing off a few dozen mortars in the cul-de-sac is pretty much a hostile act.
A neighborhood show could be good, if the neighbors coordinated. But most people don’t talk to their neighbors unless their HOA forces them to by being terrible. So the average neighborhood show is actually a bunch of different families shooting off competing fireworks.
Another argument against personal fireworks shows is that I’ve often found that people get so excited about shooting them off that they can’t contain themselves, and often overbuy. Then we get fireworks from about June 27th until July 8th. So when I complain to people that my dog doesn’t like fireworks and they come back with “It’s only one night!” It isn’t. It’s like 10 days.
I think I’ve rambled enough. Don’t do fireworks yourself unless you are going to put forth the effort to make a good show worth watching. If you can’t do that, do yourself a favor and go to a bigger professional show.
This is part of a series where the answer to the question in the title is always “No.”