Happy Independence Day
Which, here in The City (My The City), we celebrate by traveling across county lines to buy fireworks that we can’t purchase in our own county. Then we illegally set them off until the police come by and tell us the neighbors are complaining. It’s an annual tradition now for 6 years.
Now matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.
Be safe out there and have fun.
July 4th, 2015 at 2:29 pm
Be of good cheer today, Countrymen, and remember well that all is not lost as long as there are a few brave souls still willing to enter the arena.
Happy Independence Day!
July 4th, 2015 at 3:44 pm
Illegaler fireworks are funner fireworks. 🙂
Happy Independence Day to the UncFam!
July 4th, 2015 at 5:26 pm
When I was a kid in IN, we always awaited the arrival of a friend or relative that had been to or through TN, as that was where all our bangy stuff came from. A few years ago, someone figured out a way around the illegality of selling here: you had to pinky swear you were taking it out of state to fire. Now they’ve just given up and you can buy and fire anything up to mortars with 3″ shells. ‘Murica!
A happy one to you and yours.
July 4th, 2015 at 6:15 pm
Could be worse. Pennsylvania won’t sell anything that leaves the ground to residents, but will sell that stuff to non-residents who are supposed to take it outside the state. New Jersey residents can’t even buy sparklers in their own state, but they can drive over here and buy a truckload of bottle rockets to take home.
It makes our liquor laws look sane.
July 4th, 2015 at 6:50 pm
Mr Evilwrench,
Back in the day, 50’s and 60’s, I lived in Nashville (Davidson County) where fireworks were illegal to sell and shoot. But unless someone called the police, no big deal. I and other neighborhood kids in West Nashville saved our money all year, then one of our parents loaded up a car and drove us over the county line to rural Cheatham County where we would squander our savings on firecrackers and bottle rockets and a few less ” affordable” fireworks. I just sit back and let others buy’em and enjoy the sights and sounds now in Robertson
County, a “free” county.
Happy Independence Day! Long Live the Revolution!
July 4th, 2015 at 10:11 pm
Are you still in a lawsuit with your neighbor? Any details or did I miss them?
July 5th, 2015 at 2:19 am
“Be safe out there and have fun.”
Can’t hardly do both at the same time, can we?
OK; we’ll put “safe” in scare quotes, so hopefully we won’t actually die or even lose any major body parts while having fun. That works.
Or maybe you meant it chronologically, as in “be safe out there, and after you’ve finished being safe, then go ahead and have fun”. That works too.
July 5th, 2015 at 3:00 am
I’m in Chicago, and it still sounds like a war zone at 2:00 a.m.. The cops are happy that it’s not gunfire. And, yes, fireworks, including the good sparklers, are totally illegal, and stands alongside I-94 in Indiana and Wisconsin do a … booming business.
July 5th, 2015 at 3:08 am
nk, I wonder how sure they really are that there aren’t any gun bangs among all that.
In Thousand Oaks tonight, it was tame by comparison to Kansas City MO. That was like refighting the war. Was genuinely concerned for a Vietnam vet friend with PTSD, but he knew to stay low this time of year.
July 5th, 2015 at 4:23 am
Happy bureaucratic state day!
July 5th, 2015 at 10:20 am
And to YOU, good sir!
gfa
July 5th, 2015 at 3:52 pm
I recall the glorious 4ths of July in Baltimore, where I often sat in my Hampden row house living room and counted the bangs – 5 or 6 for revolvers, 7 for 1911s and 15 or 17 for Glock 19s & 17s. Glock .40s just weren’t popular in the 1990s among local civilians not in the drug trade, apparently.
My neighbor, an electric company lineman, spent the nights of the 4th each year (like New Years) fixing transformers and broken insulators and downed wires all over town – amazing what “unaimed” shots can hit when there are enough of them being fired by drunk or high assclowns. His pocketful of shell casings from work sites on those nights was always impressive.
Safety on the 4th in Bawlmer was brick walls front & back, and rowhouse neighbors on both sides.
I never went beyond over-charging the son’s potato cannon and blasting a fireball from the front porch. After all, I was one street over from the local police station.
July 5th, 2015 at 4:29 pm
mikee, that must have been before folks were given “space to destroy”?
July 5th, 2015 at 4:49 pm
“Inebriated Arsonist” – that’s not the half of it.
Out-of-PA residents can buy BIG fireworks in Morrissville, just across the ‘free bridge’, and in full view of the NJ State House complex in Trenton.
BUT … NJ residents stopping there – even to look – need to be aware that NJ Gestapo watch this and other venues, looking for NJ license plates, and just DYING to pull over and harass/bust an innocent.
Come down to ‘Bama! Fireworks trailers are plentiful, and many are permanently sited (yet open usually only around holidays).
July 5th, 2015 at 8:42 pm
Mr. Wizard, that’s one of the aspects of a free State like ”Bama vs. a slave State like NJ. I don’t want to see any of those slave State flags flown here tin Tennessee neither!
July 5th, 2015 at 9:30 pm
I remember when the fireworks superstore opened up on Watt Road on the county line. Knox County, which bans the sale and use of fireworks, tried to claim property taxes. Alas, only the parking lot is in Knox County. The store itself is in Loudon County.
July 6th, 2015 at 9:23 am
http://www.fireworks.com/locations/phantom-cocoa/
https://plus.google.com/113631500443111054162/about?hl=en
But you can only use the good ones to “frighten(ing) birds from agricultural works and fish hatcheries“:
http://flaglerlive.com/56170/fireworks-florida-law/