China’s Revenge
This year was my first 4th of July in the Mission District of San Francisco, and even though I’d heard reports I was unprepared for the amazing exhibition of loud, bright, flaming things flying through the air. Chrissy Field and the Embarcadero were lit up with big traditional fireworks displays. But so was the Castro, Twin Peaks, Bernal Hill, Potrero Hill, and every intersection between those points. Big ones, pretty ones, mean and noisy ones, sparkling, whistling, screaming, and ear-popping ones—you name it, it was going off that night. At 2-second intervals. In short, the City looked and sounded like a guerrilla war going on in a carnival tent.
This was fun in a presaging-the-apocalypse type of way, or a cynical-about-the-nation way, or an SF-is-wild-and-wacky kind of way. I vacillated between laughing along with everybody else, being glad I didn’t work for the fire department, and wondering if any of the kids on the street knew the Star Spangled Banner. People told me the fireworks and firecrackers would go on till 4 am or so. I left at 10:30, long enough to have seen lots of revelry but early enough to get back home by midnight.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t late enough to walk safely to my car, which was a block away. The M-80s were going off fast and furious, and I felt like I needed to duck to avoid sniper attacks. In the intersection near my car there were some kids lighting fireworks. I waited to cross the street until they had finished. Needing to back up my car slightly to get out of the space, it was a good thing I checked the rear-view mirror before moving! I nearly ran over a newly-lit rolling ball o’ flame which probably would not have been good to have underneath my car.
Still, part of me was enjoying it. Anarchy in the streets, kids having fun, margaritas, bbq, people celebrating together. What’s not to love? But driving through the Mission, I started to get another view entirely. The streets were strewn with ash and wreckage from the fireworks. The sky was filled with noxious smoke. All those fireworks came from China, right? And now the whole toxic brew would get washed into the gutters and drain into the San Francisco Bay.
If China puts poison in their dog food to export, and antifreeze in their toothpaste to export, why the hell aren’t we worried about what it’s putting into its non-foodstuff exports like fireworks? I mean, there are mountains of our old CRT monitors, computer innards, and other high-tech pollution lying around China’s countryside. If I were a clever middle-management person over there I’d quickly develop a way to slip the worst of the lead, mercury, and other heavy metals into the pretty, bright, sparkly fireworks heading back overseas. That would probably earn me a promotion and be poetic justice to boot.
So it was with a sour taste in my mouth that I drove out of the City Wednesday night. It had been fun hanging out with friends, watching my daughters traipse around from party to party, and soaking in some homegrown celebrating, Mission style. But now I just dread hearing the reports that will come in when people start testing these things. I’m sure it is only a matter of time before someone gives us the bad news and tells us what we’re unloading all over ourselves, our children, and our neighborhoods. It just makes me weary and sad beyond belief that even on a happy occasion when we celebrate this country, we trash it at the same time. And that we are setting such a poor standard as a country that there are people all over the world who wouldn’t think twice about following our example and sending their poisons over to us, wrapped in a big American flag.