This upcoming Fourth of July will be my fourth celebration at my apartment, which overlooks the National Mall and has a prime view of the fireworks. Our landlord opens the roof every year, and the whole building turns out to cluster up there and watch. The fireworks explode in the space between the Washington Monument and the apartment building that sits between my building and the Mall, and it's stunning.
I knew from the minute I found my apartment that it was going to be Fourth of July Central. My friends who helped me move informed me, upon seeing the view from my balcony, that I had a civic duty to host an annual party, and I've made sure to live up to my end of the bargain. It's a pretty sweet deal for me, because I don't have to fight traffic or crowds, other than weaving my way through people on my way to the cooler or the food table.
There have only been a few years that I've lived in the D.C. area and not gone to see the fireworks over the Mall. In 1991, my friends and I snuck into the first HFStival, an alternative music festival hosted (only once...the County Supervisor for that area of Fairfax County had no idea what he was in for...) at Lake Fairfax Park just outside Reston, Virginia, and we watched fireworks at the end of the day exploding over the lake. Another year, some friends and I went to the Orioles game that night, which was still going on when the fireworks went off over Baltimore's Inner Harbor out of the sightlines of Camden Yards, so we missed them entirely.
But almost every other year, I've managed to see them explode against the backdrop of the Mall. One summer, when I was still a lifeguard, I had to close the pool on the Fourth, and thought there was no way I'd be able to see the fireworks. It didn't bother me until dusk started to gather, and then I got wistful and called home to see what my mother was planning to do. The pool crowd had headed home, and it looked like we were going to close a little bit early, so she offered to come pick me up at 8:45 and said she was sure we'd make the 9:20 fireworks start time.
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