Ah, yes ... big cultural celebrations. I forget how these things go. Two stores I made an effort to get to in the evening had closed early. Our building was having a viewing thing out on the plaza (I was shocked at the number of people there ... must have been 100).Having lived in my old neighborhood for 40 years, I was pretty set in my ways as to how to view the fireworks (although that evolved over the years), so I was fairly clueless as to how things worked up here. As opposed to the main Chicago display (down at Navy Pier), which starts at 9:30pm, the first major set of fireworks up this way kicked off pretty much as soon as it got dark. Still not sure what was coming from where. We think the early ones were at Foster beach (along with others up at Hollywood that we could hear but not see), and then a second set going up about the time of the Navy Pier display, possibly at Montrose.
I actually went out to try to watch these with the other folks from the building, but was chased insider by the mosquitoes after about 5 minutes ... we had a better view anyway from our windows - I don't think there was any line-of-sight down there that would catch the main display.
In our old place, we could see hundreds of displays off in the distance, as we had an uninterrupted horizon line from WNW to E, so could see most of the northside neighborhoods' (and suburbs') fireworks. When we first moved into 46E, the City did the fireworks from Monroe Harbor, but new buildings eventually blocked our view, and then they were moved to Navy Pier (which was on the other side of the Hancock from us), so we had to head over to the lake (we usually just settled in on the cement area at Chicago Ave. - a reasonably easy walk) to see them.
I guess it was "easier" up here ... but it's just another reminder that I'm not where I had intended to live out my life.
