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The Macy's July 4th fireworks outrage
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It’s perfidy. It’s blasphemy. It’s an outrage. The Macy’s 4th of July fireworks will be on the Hudson this year. Why should this matter? It’s not that it will be impossible to see them from Brooklyn. It’s that New Jersey gets a free show.
The Macy’s fireworks did originally begin on the Hudson back in 1956. In 1976, some brain realized that by having the display on the Hudson, it was giving those rubes in Jersey a free show. So, they moved it.
Years later, realizing they’d been had, Jersey made a play for the Statue of Liberty which failed. I’m mean, c’mon. When the huddled masses and wretched refuse were sitting in their mud huts in Europe, gnawing on the bones of their dead, did they say, “Hey I know! Let’s go to Jersey!” No, they did not.
They came to New York City. They came to New York City and the first thing they did was buy new shoes. Sturdy, foot encasing shoes. They knew that being well shod was a path to prosperity and the American Dream. They knew that having exposed feet on the disease ridden sidewalks of New York could only mean certain misery and death.
Today, in what can only be considered a slap in the face of our intrepid ancestors, the streets abound with people in flip flops and sandals, less than an inch away from the fetid sidewalks and a few spores away from flesh eating diseases. Podiatrists and epidemiologists are salivating.
Speaking of spores, it’s a little known fact that the bridges and tunnels coming into New York were free of tolls in the beginning. Then someone said, “Hey, we can soak those chumps from Jersey and make them pay to get in, like a cover charge.” That someone was Fiorello Enrico La Guardia. Yup, that’s right. The Little Flower. He hated Jersey with a passion. When he took a sledge hammer to the “pinball machines,” it was said his original plan was to go to Jersey and wail on some Garden Staters, but aides suggested bashing the gambling machines rather than driving to Jersey. Probably a sound decision though less satisfying. This may or may not be true.
Anyway, back to the fireworks. The extravaganza begins at approximately 9:20 pm between 24th and 50th Streets on the Hudson River and for 26 minutes the leeches in Jersey will get a free show and New York will lose hundreds and thousands of dollars in toll revenue.
Happy 4th of July. Wear sensible shoes and don’t put an eye out.
