[AstroNutt]

Back around 1982, fireworks were a big no in my neighborhood. My friend across the street had some bottle rockets and he decided to shoot one off in the middle of the street. We didn't have a bottle to put it in to light it, so we wedged it between two bricks. He lit it and a split second before it went off, it tilted to point directly down the street. It fired off blazing down the middle of the road. At the same time a cop car just happened to turn the corner and that damn thing popped on the hood of the cop car. We scattered like ants. My friend that lit it ran inside, I hid in his garage under his moms car and the other two hauled ass home.

Well the cop parked out front and knocked on his door. His dad answered and they spent which felt like an hour (probably 10-15 minutes) talking about what happened. He got in big trouble and grounded. I stayed in the garage until the smoke cleared, then ran home. I didn't see him for at least a week.

Your post reminded me about that incident. They were regulated in Fort Worth Texas 44 years ago. I haven't thought about that day in years! LOL! Thanks for the fun memory.

[ryandrake]

Yea, I think OP is wearing rose-colored glasses. I'm 50 and I don't remember any time in my life when anything bigger than sparklers or tiny firecrackers were legal. To my young eyes, they've always been illegal. The differences now are 1. a more belligerent and careless population and 2. plummeting police enforcement. You can read a lot of comments here from places (mostly CA) where people care to do the right thing and enforcement is actually happening, and lo and behold it's at least helping. Fireworks bans are not any more "culturally unenforceable" than masking during COVID was.

It helps when your local culture is respectful, cooperative, and intelligent enough to understand why we don't light fires when every tree and blade of grass within 200 miles is dry as a bone. It hurts when your local culture is "Fuck everyone else, I'm going to do what I want!"

[blincoln]

Just to add to the anecdotes:

I'm in my late 40s. I grew up on an island in Washington state. Truly commercial-grade fireworks (the kind that professionals would launch for an audience of thousands) were banned by that time, but plenty of fireworks that would be categorized as "commercial-grade" today were sold publicly by multiple vendors every year.

I love fireworks now, but my first memory of them was terrifying. I would have been about 3 to 5. My parents drove our VW bus to a nearby beach to watch the local display. It was total madness. Teenagers threw explosive fireworks onto and underneath our car.

Even a lot of the smaller home-use fireworks back then had hilariously unsafe behaviour. I remember in particular one called something like "Saturn Missile Battery". It was a box that launched a 10x10 grid of 100 whistling, finless plastic rockets (each about 4-5cm x 5-6mm), with each rocket exploding when their propellant ran out. Because they had no stabilization, they would fly in all directions, change direction in flight, etc. When my dad set it off, one of them literally flew right over our heads into the house and exploded in the basement.

My experience is that outside of Seattle, enforcement of fireworks restrictions is pretty lax. For example, if one watches the professional display in Tacoma, one will also see most of Dash Point / Browns Point continuously lit up by fireworks that are unambiguously well outside the legal restrictions.

I agree that a lot of people are reckless, and it's just a matter of time before it causes a high-profile disaster somewhere in the state. But I also agree with the parent comment that it's such an ingrained part of American culture that it would be very hard to change - at least until there's a local disaster that gives people a visceral feeling for the danger.

[ButlerianJihad]

In the mid-90s I had a brief but enjoyable hobby of model rocketry. I guess the #1 obstacle in this pastime is finding a safe launch site.

I had assembled a gorgeous SR-71 Blackbird rocket. I took it to a vast lawn space at Warren College, UCSD, on a quiet weekend, and set it on its maiden voyage. The very lopsided SR-71 immediately went horizontal and landed softly within a swimming pool fence where I had no access.

Some time later, I chose the neighborhood public school yard on a weekend. Nevertheless, the preparations drew a curious crowd of unaccompanied minor children who were younger than me. I told them to be careful and stay clear, and set off the rocket. By the time its parachute deployed, a security guard was driving his car around the field to meet us all at the landing site and give us all a stern warning.

So I abandoned that hobby forever and found less explosive things to tinker with. This week I grabbed two boxes of glow-sticks at the hardware store, and had myself a very glowy 4th.

[sizzle]

Should have launched it off from Geisel library

[chasd00]

That’s what I remember too. Fireworks in the city limits was a no-no. People would do it but you were risking a visit from the local police car. In my neighborhood (OakCliff in Dallas) the police have completely given up, people cruise Jefferson Ave shooting AR15s out of the back of their trucks every Sunday night. July 4th and New Years is completely out of control, it’s going to take a house getting burned down or some other horrible tragedy to change it.

[alsetmusic]

We were setting off fireworks in the street in the middle of the afternoon (cause you'd buy a bunch and gradually deploy in the days leading up to the event). We shot off a rocket, which was one of mine. There were fire trucks shortly after putting out a blaze in an open lot. 1980s, I was <10 years, my older brother and his friend were pretty sure we caused it.

I have no way to know if we started that fire, but regulations exist for a reason and people who live in at-risk areas understand that they could lose their homes.

[mythrwy]

Some friends and I lit a wheat field on fire with Roman candles in Oklahoma when I was 18.

We were having a blast driving down the road shooting candles out of the car window when we topped the crest of a small hill and looked back to see smoke. We drove back and the field was on fire. Fortunately we were able to put it out before it spread any further and the area was so isolated no one saw us.

[Melatonic]

The dumb kid always runs through their own front door

[newsclues]

So regulated kids could get them and use them without supervision eh?