Ah, the 4th of July...barbecues, sunshine, fireworks...stampede?
I wanted to do something fun for the 4th of July this year (hey, I haven't been in the States for July Fourth since 2010!), so I convinced my sister to go to the festival going on downtown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Better than sitting on the couch with my dad, I assumed.
We got to the Parkway around 9:30 pm, and it was what I expected: lots of young hipster-looking kids mixed with some ghetto-ness in a haze of marijuana smoke. We made our way closer to the stage, where J-Cole was singing (or trying to). Pass. Some country singer took the stage, and I thought it sounded kind of like Jason Mraz, but the country tinge was turning me off. He could sing, but it just wasn't my type of music. The Roots were high energy, and being from Philly, they had the crowd all pumped up. Yet, I was getting tired of smelling pot everywhere I turned, and I wanted a good view of the fireworks, whenever they were going to start.
My sister and I headed back toward Logan Square, and found a nice spot to see the show. It was 10 pm, then 10:30, and we were both getting tired (as were people around us). I honestly only came for the fireworks, so I was pretty firm that I didn't want to leave until we saw them. That's when Ne-Yo began singing on the big-screen perched on the Parkway, and we had to keep waiting. I griped for Usher to stop singing, then was corrected that it was Ne-Yo, not Usher. My sister got bopped in the head by a patriotic balloon some young-looking suburbanite was toting around. It amused us for a good 10 minutes, but I wanted these fireworks!
Finally, at about 11 pm, they got underway. I can't lie, I was disappointed. Maybe television makes them look more spectacular than they really are, because these fireworks weren't anything to write home about. Certainly not anything worth lugging myself from home, on the el, and down the Parkway in 90-degree heat and humidity to see. But, they were nice, and watching them explode over the Art Museum was a nice touch.
Right before the finale, a see a huge swarm of people to my right come stampeding towards us. All of a sudden, the entire crowd around us is in a frenzy. My sister and I latch onto each other; "I got you, I got you", I yell over the buzz of feet shuffling and babies crying. I saw several strollers go down, and I wanted to help ("That baby is on the ground!"), but I couldn't; I was being herded along by the stampede. We finally manage to get to a clear area, and we're so shaken, we just head for City Hall, holding hands.
"What was that?" my sister asks. "I don't know, but let's just get out of here", I answer, as we power-walk our way through the masses of people, past discarded shoes, hoagie wrappers, and beer bottles. We surprisingly catch the first train once we get through throngs of people crowding into the station. Smothered like sardines, my sister clings to me so I don't fall over (I'm small, and I get jostled around in that train easily!). It smells heavily of marijuana, and some drunk guy suggests that we all sing the National Anthem.
"O Say Can You See...", he belts out the "Star-Spangled Banner", singing the wrong lyrics half the time (no surprise there), and a few others join in, creating quite a spectacle. After they finish, or rather, just kind of trail off, chants of "USA! USA!" and "F**k Canada!" ring in the air. It's actually pretty funny, and I'm beginning to see all the madness I miss when I go to bed before 11 pm.
But, there's a scare when someone lets off a firecracker on the el, and people freak out and kids cry. Unfortunately, our stop is the last one, so we cram together as people hop on the train from other stops, and breath a sigh of relief when others get off. We finally make it to our stop at midnight, and the last hurdle is navigating 69th street after-hours safely. We make it home!
Too tired to shower, I just hit the hay. I wake up in the morning with a body and bedroom that smells heavily of pot. I worry that this stench is going to linger for a while, so I grab one of my dad's huge candles (he's got a whole cache), going for the Chocolate Mint scent. Ah...the room is filled with the aroma of that wonderful candle. I wash all of my clothes, and get paranoid that my work shirt is going to reek when I go into to work, and they'll kick me out for suspecting I'm a pothead. It takes about 2 days for the smell to finally vanish, but the internal scar remains. I don't care if you smoke pot, just do it away from me.
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