Happy July 4th!!! East Bay Fireworks

Berkeley Fireworks

Mid summer has arrived already and today’s the day for lots of happenings. There are festivals galore in many of our East Bay Communities. Berkeley has an event on the south shore of the Berkeley Marina at the bottom of University. It lasts from noon until 9pm with plenty of international food booths, live music and entertainment on the main stage, face painting and plenty of activities for the kids, free sail boat rides, and even massages (that sounds good to me).  There is free ice cream in the Park in Albany at the Albany Veterans Memorial Park sponsored by the Albany Chamber of Commerce. El Cerrito has its own WorldOneFestival with international food booths, lots of live music, and many fun games and events for kids and adults at the Cerrito Vista Park and Portola Middle School.  For more information go to www.el-cerrito.org/recreation/4th_of_July.html.

Oakland’s fireworks are back in Jack London Square. Last year the mayor cancelled them, I think to punish someone, but don’t quote me on that???  But they are back with a bang so plan on 5 hours of live music, entertainment, and fireworks from 4:30pm to 9:30pm.

I plan to enjoy dinner with friends at their home in the Berkeley hills. In my opinion the Berkeley and El Cerrito hills are the best location to view the fireworks. From some locations you can see the fireworks in Jack London in Oakland, the Berkeley Marina, San Francisco, many fireworks in towns on the Peninsula, Sausalito’s, and many others in Marin County. Some people say Indian Rock is the best place in the Berkeley hills but I prefer my friend’s deck while sipping on a nice glass of white wine.

Whatever you do today, do it safe. Stick with the fireworks provided by local cities. Doing your own could result in visiting my friend who works as an x-ray technician at Kaiser. He will be working until 1am tonight just in case you blow a limb off or two. Seriously, he sees a lot of that on the 4th.  You could also be responsible for creating more air quality problems like we had last week by burning down all our beautiful natural resources. I will be mad at you if you do that. So PLEASE, no personal fireworks!! It scares the animals.  Happy 4th of July!!!!

I took a few minutes to preview various fireworks injury sites. As I don’t want my readers to puke or anything, I’ve chosen these 2 in order to make my point. Please enjoy the youtube movie of fireworks gone bad.   and a fireworks factory explosion – see what 1 little mistake can turn into.

Written and Edited by Dan Joy