I've seen some good fireworks over the years - DisneyWorld, Washington DC, Saint Louis - but minute for minute, Sunday evening in Kingston may have been the best ever. Must have cost a fortune.
The bridge crosses high over the creek, between Kingston and Port Ewen. On the Port Ewen side, there are some high undeveloped tree-covered bluffs between the village and the creek. They did the fireworks from the bridge and the bluffs.
It seemed like there were never fewer than 5 blossoms in the air at once, and there was no time space between shots. They had a LOT of the double and triple ones - where a chrysanthemum blooms, and then each of the rays bloom into different color mum, then each of those rays bloom again, and each separate blooming made a different sound - boom, or crackle, or scream. Even the few single mums were spectacular - they were wider than the visual field of my glasses. Some mums rained screaming flaming corkscrews. The crowd favorite was when they shot up one after another rocket very high, which then opened to rain down very long quiet showers of white sparkles - it looked like five huge waterfalls in the sky. They did that a few times, scattered throughout the show. The other favorite was when they lit one end of the bridge, and a shower of white sparkles spread along the length of the bridge, cascading down to the creek, Niagara Falls, and then fountains shot up above the bridge. Very pretty. The cascade lasted a long time, too.
There was so much that was so spectacular that several times I thought we were seeing the - I forget what it's called, when they shoot off everything they've got at the end - I thought we were seeing that, and that the fireworks were over, but they kept on going and going, at that high level, for more than a half hour.
It got to where you could see a steady red glow in the trees on the bluff across the creek. It looked like the trees were on fire. Some of the people around me were concerned that that was indeed the case. After the fireworks were over (and the glow dissipated), I heard a guy behind me say "Well, the mayor of Kingston said he was going to burn Port Ewen down. Looks like he damn near did it!" (That's when I remembered there's a dynamite factory inPort Ewen. The other end of town, but still.... Terrorists could have blown up the factory that evening, and no one would have noticed!)
One thing that amazed me was how nice, polite, and orderly the crowd was. The city had put fragile orange temporary fencing around the flower beds. When I saw that Saturday night, I figured it wouldn't last long - but when I left Sunday evening, it looked like even in the most densely packed areas the fencing was still up and the flowers were untrampled. Cool.
During the shuttle ride back to the car, an ambulance passed headed down. Apparently things got a little nastier around midnight. There was a stabbing, and a "violent domestic dispute", and some guy arrested for disturbing the peace kicked out a window in a police car (or maybe he kicked out the window and then got arrested?) I guess I know now why the food venders didn't hang around.
Oh, almost forgot - Something interesting happened when I was walking up to the shuttle stop. I was wrapped from hip to chin in the monk's shawl, and walked past a group of three middle-aged men, when one said "Hello Sweetie. How are you doing?" I don't get flirting-in-passing anymore, so I figured it had to be someone I knew, so I turned around, and it was a stranger. Nice looking, too. And he really was talking to me (yeah, I looked around to make sure).
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