2005-07-04 10:02 p.m.

El Suburb Watches The Fireworks

Seeing fireworks in the Bay Area means that when it starts to get dark, you bundle up ("the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco"), hop in the car and drive up the nearest hill. When I was a kid in Mayberry, this meant driving up Mt. Tamalympus and finding a congenial turnout with a bay view. We might have shared our turnout with 10 or 20 people.

Watching fireworks in El Suburb is a whole 'nuther ball game.

We headed for the steepest, clearest street we knew of, the one where you could actually see the bay because no one wanted to build their house next to the ginormous high-voltage power lines, only to find it was blocked off by the police. Once we managed to sneak around the back way, we found hundreds of people, bundled up in their summer/winter finest.

Everyone oohed and aahed as we simultaneously watched the fireworks shows in Sausalito, San Francisco (quickly obscured by fog), Oakland, Berkeley (whose fireworks were pretty weak this year), Richmond and the various unofficial fireworks shows in the flatlands. The smell of cordite wafted through our hair and the power lines that bring in a good chunk of the Bay Area's power sizzled overhead. El Suburb we stand as one.

And how were your fireworks?

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