The list of old-fashioned pleasures that are no longer considered healthy grows with each passing year. Smoking, of course, is now on the naughty list, but also things like eating steak with your fried eggs; the three-martini lunch; piling kids and dogs into the back of a pickup truck or the cargo area of a station wagon (where, being driven home from a holiday dinner, they see all the stars of the galaxy out the back window), and so on. Whether or not fireworks displays belong on this list may be an open question.
We field criticisms every summer in the Letters to the Editor. Fireworks frighten our pets and can spark bad memories among combat veterans. These truths cannot be denied. Nevertheless, we persist: We are heartily pro-fireworks and will never join the chorus of nays.
For fireworks fans, this summer will be a blast. In New York City, the East River — from the Brooklyn Bridge to Pier 6 — will be alight with rockets’ red glare when Sail4th 250, the semiquincentennial celebration for America’s 250th birthday, reaches fever pitch on July 4, with the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Show. And here on the South Fork, there will be at least seven opportunities to see fireworks in July alone.
As soon as the sun goes down on Thursday, July 2, the North Sea Fire Department will fire up the night at its annual carnival. There will be a second North Sea carnival show on the Fourth, too — and a cascade of glittering chrysanthemums, flashing strobes, shimmering palms, and shooting comets all the way to Montauk.
Most of it is happening on July Fourth itself. The East Hampton Fire Department’s annual display returns to Main Beach on July 4 this year, weather permitting. That night, there’s also Stars Over Montauk, launched from a barge outside the Montauk Inlet; the John A. Ward Independence Day Fireworks from the Sag Harbor Yacht Club, blazing out over the harbor, and the Devon Yacht Club’s display, a tradition since 1947 courtesy of the Grucci family, lighting up Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett. The Clamshell Foundation’s fireworks show is planned for the following weekend, July 11, over Three Mile Harbor.
Only two weeks and counting until the best fireworks season since 1976 kicks off. Leave Rover at home and buy him a ThunderShirt if he’s nervous. Start planning your picnics (and traffic mitigation strategies) now.