Fourth of July

Yes, when Independence Day rolls round, no city holds its collective head higher than Washington. The spirit of '76 courses through the city like a second Potomac. When the Founding Fathers gathered at the White House to sign the Declaration of Independence...what's that? DC wasn't founded til after the Revolution, you say?

Oh. So you mean Washington's only claim to fame on July Fourth is its big honking fireworks display?

What's wrong with that? Nothing, I say. High explosives are part of American history. And no city--with the possible exception of Detroit after a Pistons win--does explosions better than DC during Independence Day.

Two summers ago, I watched the artillery--er, the festivities--from across the river in Crystal City. But that's akin to the difference between watching the Super Bowl on a big screen and watching the Super Bowl at the Super Bowl. The spectacle is cool, and you appreciate its grandeur, but everything seems to be happening in miniature. You feel as if you could reach out over the water and flick away one of the Roman candles with your pinkie.

This year, however, I was closer to the action. Not on the mall itself--its prime location wasn't enough to offset the fact that the mall on Independence Day is more crowded than a rush hour Metro to Rockville. I walked across the mall the morning of the fourth. Already, people were putting out seats, setting up tents, and searching desperately for scraps of shade.

No, I watched from Cardozo High School, home of the Fighting Clerks. Intimidating! I met some friends early in the evening for a truly American meal of turkey burgers, baked beans, and blueberry pie. We then walked five minutes down to Cardozo and joined a crowd best described as "anarchic." People sat on the street, on cars, on fire escapes...they dangled from fire escapes and waved from the roofs--they formed an impenetrable scrum impenetrable to anyone smaller than an NFL linebacker.

It was an interesting and diverse bunch; Columbia Heights is home to Washington's increasingly and annoyingly vibrant hipster population, so there were plenty of tight jeans and white-framed sunglasses. One guy munched a turkey leg that looked like it came from a pterodactyl.

Fireworks started at 9:10. A little streak gold climbed the horizon, rising parallel to the Washington Monument, and burst into a billion green and red sparks. The crowd whooped. An orange blast went up, then a red, then a gold one that sprinkled down like a rainstorm sponsored by Mountain Dew. The crowd had now reached a state of permanent whoopation. I heard later that some fireworks exploded into pink hearts. I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor. Within ten minutes the fireworks were half-obscured by a grayish gunpowder smog.

What made the experience weird, even eerie, was the quiet. Not that the crowd was subdued. They were anything but. As far as we were from the mall, however, the fireworks made almost no sound. A faint popping noise was the most we heard. It could have been the sound of cherry bombs bursting a block away.

The crowd, obligingly inebriated as many of them were, tried to contribute their own background noise. A couple patriotic songs started up, staggered raggedly along, and collapsed before they reached the first chorus. "America the Beautiful" didn't make it past "purple mountains majesty." One bold girl managed to get through the entirety of "The Star Spangled Banner." Her achievement was met with applause, whoops, and shouts of "Amurica!"

Walking home afterward was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you had picked up some stranger and dropped them in Columbia Heights that evening, without telling them the date, they would likely have thought they landed in Sarajevo circa 1994. Snaps, crackles, and pops went off every thirty seconds. A few bottle rockets burst above the skyline. I felt an overwhelming urge to duck and cover.

My conclusion? Fireworks are always cool, no matter the place, no matter the time. But the fireworks of DC are the greatest of them all.