Brian Tannam:
For example...where do the general public head for precisely, to get a good
view of the Macys 4th July Fireworks display, and how early would you
advise us to be in position.

I visited New York for the fireworks in 2003, and here's part of
the long email message I wrote to a friend afterwards, slightly
edited. As I have no plans to go there again this year, I have
*not* checked whether everything will be the same.

* * * * * * * *

Michael and Steve replied with sufficiently helpful information to
lead me to http://www.ny.com/holiday/july4/, where I found all
the relevant information about the New York fireworks show on one
page. Later I called Michael again for some more specific advice.
The web site had said:

Each year Macy's kicks off the world's largest fireworks display
at approximately 9pm on July 4th. Four barges stationed between
23rd and 42nd Streets in the East River set off 20,000 aerial
shells and special effects. ...

Southbound lanes of the FDR drive from 14th to 42nd Street will
be open for the public from 7:30pm to 10:00pm. On-ramp entrances
for pedestrians (including the disabled) are located at 23rd,
38th, and 42nd streets. ...

FDR Drive is an elevated road. Having decided to use that viewing
area, it was now necessary to choose which of these entrances to
use, and where to board the subway after the show to return to
the hotel. The tradeoffs were complicated -- levels of crowding
in different parts of the viewing area, levels of crowding on the
subway, number of changes of train, distance to walk, frequency
of service.

In addition, because the subway map is not to scale and I'd not
brought the National Geographic Road Atlas with its good city-center
coverage (it devotes 2/3 of a page to a map at about 1/30,000 scale
showing the whole southern half of Manhattan), it was nontrivial
to figure out how far the different subway stations were from the
hotel and from the ramps to the viewing area.

After some discussion with Michael -- who would himself be in New
Jersey on the day, poor fellow -- we decided it was best to use
the 23rd Street ramp and walk north for several blocks, in order
to have the best chance of getting a position along the edge of
the road and so an unobstructed view of the river.

After the show, Cathy and I would walk along 23rd to either
Lexington Avenue (for a two-train ride to the hotel) or Broadway
(for a one-train ride). The nearest station to 23rd and FDR is
actually 1st Avenue on the 14th Street subway, again giving a
two-train ride to the hotel, but Michael felt this would be too
crowded due to the relatively infrequent service on that line.

As to timing, I proposed to have dinner fairly near the chosen
entrance and finish around 7:00 or 7:15. No doubt people would
already be congregating near the ramp before it was actually
opened at 7:30, but the fact that they would have to do it on the
streets would limit their numbers somewhat. Michael agreed that
this was feasible.

I also asked Michael if in his experience there would be portable
toilets in the viewing area. He said there would, probably near
the entrance ramps.

[And now, the Fourth]

It was now a few minutes past 7:30, when the ramp would open, so
we walked east along 23rd Street to get to it. 23rd was closed
to traffic from 1st Avenue east, by the way.

Now the FDR Drive does in fact have a southbound exit ramp leading
to 23rd Street, so at this point we might have expected to turn left
-- north and up this ramp. But no, the entire pedestrian flow was
being directed south, or rather southeast, along a ground-level
street that parallels the FDR Drive above. After we had walked
along this for the equivalent of a block or two without even seeing
the ramp we were being led toward, we passed a police officer and
I asked how far this way we were going. He said 20th Street.

At this point Cathy decided that she wasn't feeling quite well and
was tired of the heat, and elected to return to the hotel by taxi.

South of 23rd Street, the east side of Manhattan bulges eastward,
which is why our route had been angling southeast. East of
1st Avenue there is eventually room for Avenues A through D.
It turned out that the ramp we were being routed toward, the *next*
southbound exit ramp after 23rd, ended at 18th Street and Avenue C.

So it was at 18th that I, with the crowd, made a U-turn northward
onto this ramp. It took two blocks for us to reach the level
of the FDR, so we got onto the roadway at about 20th Street,
and began walking north in what were normally the southbound lanes.

Once clear of the ramp area, there were three lanes, but a line
of wooden barricades had been placed between the lane farthest
from the river (i.e. normally the right lane) and the other two.
The two lanes nearest the river were filled with standing people,
many of them set up with blankets, radios, collapsible seats,
and other appurtenances suitable for such an occasion; in the
third lane, people were walking north.

But I hadn't walked very far at all, maybe a block, when I realized
that ALTHOUGH I WAS TWO LANES AWAY FROM THE RIVER EDGE OF THE ROAD,
I COULD SEE THE LAUNCHING BARGES IN THE RIVER, OVER ALL THE PEOPLE
IN BOTH LANES.

This was because the part of the road I was on was *curved*,
following an irregularity in the island's shoreline, and the curve
was banked. The concave side was toward the river, and so, the
road surface sloped down toward the river. There was just enough
of a slope to make a perfect "theater rake" effect!

If I continued walking, I might get to an area where the road was
uncrowded enough that I could get a space by the river edge of
the road -- but almost certainly I would get to the end of this
curve before that. And I was tired enough from the walking and
the heat that I made a quick decision to stop right where I was,
if it was allowed.

For 5 or 10 minutes I simply stood just behind the barrier; some
other people near me had the same idea. Then I realized that
the best way to rest my back was to sit on the pavement and lean
against the barricade, so I did that, facing away from the river.

And about two minutes after that, a police officer came along and
said something like, "You people can't stay there, the lane has to
be kept clear." But as I climbed ruefully to my feet, he added,
"get on the other side of the barrier", and moved a section of
it aside!

Well!

I headed a little way through the opening, not wanting to get in
the way of someone who was there before be. But there were about
10 of us being let in, and immediately the ones behind me said
"Keep moving"; I was blocking their way in. I said, "Well, I'm
trying not to get in anybody's way", and this was laughed at. Then,
for the second time in one day, I was informed: "This is New York!"

So I laughed, moved in farther, and ended up about 1/3 of the
way forward in the two-lane area. I was still trying not to be
directly in front of anyone, when someone said, in effect, "come
over here, there's more space in front of me than where you are".
So I did, and that was that.

It was now about 8:00. I chatted a bit with some of the people near
me; one family were Dutch (some visiting, some immigrants living
in New Jersey), and another group spoke only German. Around 8:20
I sat down on the pavement again, and at 8:55 or so I stood up.
The sky still seemed rather light for fireworks, but the web page
had clearly said 9:00...

At which time, nothing happened.

At 9:10 I sat down again, but a ripple of noise in the crowd had
me back on my feet minutes later, but it was nothing.

By 9:30, people were becoming less patient. I heard remarks like
"this is ridiculous", and one parent kept telling his child that
it would start in N minutes, for randomly varying values of N.
Some people seemed to have brought radios, and I thought maybe
someone would tune one to a news station, but they didn't.
From time to time we saw fireworks from locations in Brooklyn.

The show began at 9:45 and lasted until 10:13. It was certainly
the longest fireworks display I have ever seen, and quite beautiful,
including a number of effects that I had not seen before. There is
no point in describing it further; you just had to be there.

And then, of course, the crowd of people from many blocks of the
FDR Drive headed for the 18th Street ramp. We were moving more
or less continuously, but for the most part very, very slowly.
As the ramp came close to ground level, many people edged over to
the side of it; by climbing over a Jersey barrier and then dropping
a similar distance to the ground, one could save 5 minutes or more.
I just stayed with the main flow and I think I finally reached
ground level, just three blocks from where I had been during the
fireworks, about 10:45.

There were plenty of street vendors around the base of the ramps,
by the way, but I never saw any portable toilets. However, it was
now time to drink some water. But I checked with three vendors and
while they all had soft drinks, nobody had any water bottles left.

I figured that my original intent to catch the subway at one of the
23rd Street stations was now null and void. Instead I walked south
along Avenue C from 18th to 14th Street, and then turned west.
Along the way I passed an apartment building garage and in its
driveway was a bottled-water vending machine! I bought a 16-ounce
bottle and drank it off in about a minute.

14th Street, of course, has the east-west subway (L train) that
Michael had cited for infrequent service, and connections with all
the north- south lines. I considered walking to Union Square or
even all the way to 6th Avenue if there were large crowds around
the nearer station entrances, but as it turned out, when I got to
1st Avenue, people were moving fairly freely down the stairs to
the station. So I decided to use the L train after all.

In New York many stations have separate fare-paid areas for opposite
directions of travel, and 1st Avenue / 14th Street is one of these.
I didn't think about this, but because I happened to be walking
on the north side of the street, it didn't matter; the entrance
I went in was the right one. ...

When I got back to the hotel, Cathy was feeling fine. She had
seen the fireworks on TV, and also displays in other cities.
And she informed me that the ones in New York had been scheduled
for 9:45 all along! They were part of a coordinated show, none
of the rest of which had been visible or audible from my position,
which had started on time at 9:00!

That didn't matter to me, because I only cared about the actual
fireworks. But they couldn't have put *that* on the web site?

[I repeat, this was 2003. I know nothing specific about 2006.]
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "Mark is probably right about something,
| but I forget what" -- Rayan Zachariassen

My text in this article is in the public domain.