New York -4th of July

America doesn’t do anything on a small scale so I was keen to witness for myself their 4th of July celebration. We were told that the Brooklyn Promenade would be a good place to view the fireworks so being the veterans of standing around that we now were, we arrived a ridiculous 3 ½ hours early to secure our spot, and even then we didn’t get the best spot on offer. A few other photographers were there too setting up their tripods and wondering out loud whether this was going to be a good location. Three barge loads of fireworks went past but not even the locals knew exactly where they were going to set them off from. In Warren’s words, waiting for the fireworks was what it must have been like when America or any other country was settled. The early people get the prime positions but then the latecomers squeeze into spaces that they don’t really fit and that’s what causes feuds, battles wars and death. It’s early, but civil war may yet break out, loud arrogant Americans can do that! He’s referring to the late arriving photographers who asked the girls in the best position if they would just mind moving so he could get photos of the fireworks. I couldn’t believe the cheek of this guy and agreed totally when the girls protested that they were also here to see the fireworks.

The Police presence here was worrying. There were cops in the subways, on the streets. They were directing traffic or just standing there. When 4 helicopters flew past the waterfront a few times, you couldn’t help but think that Americas Independence Day might be a prime pick for some terrorist activity and wondered if they knew something we didn’t. There were many forms of entertainment employed to pass the waiting hours, from people doing homework, playing cards, eating durritos and pizza, listening to ipods, playing sudoku and I even saw a lady plucking the hairs out of her chin with a pair of tweezers and a group of Japanese taking photos of each other while pulling funny faces.

After a few hours we discovered we weren’t on the Brooklyn Promenade after all but by then it was too late to move. At 9pm the first fireworks went off in a dramatic anticlimax. We heard the booms of the explosions and cheers from the people in Manhattan but could see nothing. After quarter of an hour of seeing a few sparks far away in the distance we were both pretty disgruntled. But then it was finally our turn. They were loud and so close that we got showered in a light dust of soot. However, my hopes of capturing the Manhattan skyline with fireworks lighting up the sky weren’t to be (except with the help of Photoshop as demonstrated in the top photo) and instead the foreground was filled with the ugly grey ‘Brooklyn Works’ building- as seen in the photo above.