It’s my belief that Columbia Heights is the best place around to watch the 4th of July fireworks — we’re high enough that we can see the big show on the Mall (especially if you’re on a roof) and if you look in any direction you’ll see tons of DIY displays — some an occasional bottle rocket, others more impressive (and expensive) displays with almost pro quality incendiaries.
But the fire department had other thoughts — yesterday the police and fire department showed up at the 3500 block of 13th Street NW to stop the annual display put on by the James family. They’ve been doing it since 1984. The large crowd present to watch started booing and chanting to let the family patriarch, Mack James, go. He was eventually released and not charged, but the fire department seized all the fireworks, which aren’t legal in the city.
DCist had a nice article about the James family on Tuesday, who have been doing a big show every 4th of July since the 80s on the 3500 block of 13th Street NW. They originally did it for their family after they got back from the Mall show, but every year more and more friends would come to watch, and eventually lots of neighbors too.
The shutdown was apparently caused by a man name Dave Statter, a former WUSA reporter who now runs his own site that I refuse to link to. Statter started tweeting at various city and police officials asking them to shut it down, complaining about it and clutching his proverbial pearls. And apparently they heeded his tweets. (DCist, for their part, apologized, but I think they don’t have anything to apologize for. It was a nice article and the James family was happy to talk.)
To me, this is extremely lame. Instead of reading the DCist article about the family doing their awesome show for more than thirty years and thinking “wow, how cool!” he thought “I should tweet at every local official I can think of and get this shut down.”
This city is chock full of people doing their own fireworks during the 4th of July — it’s part of the charm of the holiday, especially around Columbia Heights. And this display has been going on since 1984, and draws a big crowd of neighbors every year. People love it. I would argue it’s part of our city’s culture.
In my opinion, the fire department and police had to know about it and chose to do nothing about it until this keyboard commando vigilante nerd starting making a fuss. They probably have more important things to do otherwise.
Luckily there were enough other fireworks displays around our area. No thanks to Dave Statter.
Photo by Jonathan Coffey
