{"id":21075,"date":"2017-04-30T21:15:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=21075"},"modified":"2024-07-07T15:45:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-07T19:45:31","slug":"2024-bergen-countys-and-hackensacks-fireworks-finales-7-4-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=21075","title":{"rendered":"2024 – Bergen County’s and Hackensack’s Fireworks Finales 7-4-24"},"content":{"rendered":"

…………………………………………………<\/span>(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on July 6, 2024)<\/p>\n

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My favorite at-home night of the year! No matter how hot and humid it may be on the Fourth of July, I don’t have to travel, sweat or deal with crowds while trying to get great fireworks shots or videos.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve had Hackensack’s fireworks – maybe a quarter-mile straight in front of my air-conditioned living room – for 35 years. This year, Bergen County started their own extravaganza about 2 miles away in Overpeck Park in Leonia – also straight out my living room window.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought it might be interesting seeing\u00a0both<\/u>\u00a0going off at the same time, but they staggered them – and rightly so – with Bergen County starting at about 9:05pm and Hackensack about 20 minutes later……….after the County’s finale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Great! Now I can shoot twice as many stills and video than I ever did before!<\/span><\/p>\n

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As for the stills, I found 6 that I thought were interesting, but not enough to give each their own space. I found similarities in two groups of three, so let\u2019s start with the weird ones (click the first 3 images to enlarge):<\/span><\/p>\n

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What else is there to say about them? They\u2019re weird!<\/span><\/p>\n

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The second group of three are more conventional. Normally, I would have given the third one a black background to match the other two, but I lightened it a bit to show a house in the lower right corner that has a light on in one room:<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re familiar with Teaneck, you know that the Queen Anne Rd area south of Route 4 is on a ridge – everything east and west of it is on lower ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can see the outline of the tallest trees between me and Leonia, so this house is probably about halfway between me and the Bergen County fireworks. That\u2019s probably not interesting to anyone but me, but it\u2019s my blog, so\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n

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On to the Hackensack stills\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because I was trying to shoot video of the whole Hackensack show, I only took stills with my cell. I combined the two I liked best because it looks like they\u2019re being shot off from the roof of the 389 Main residential building that\u2019s just across a parking lot from me. They also show part of the soon-to-be-gone Hackensack YMCA (yes, it\u2019s been sold and will be replaced by another monstrosity):<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you look above the Y in the image on the right, you can see what looks like a small light on the horizon. That\u2019s St Joseph\u2019s Church on Palisade Ave in Bogota (probably interesting to one other person here).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Before I get to the video of the finales, I have two other stills – and these are<\/em> interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n

One other thing I used to be able to shoot from my living room on the 4th – believe it or not – was the Macy\u2019s fireworks extravaganza, whether the barges were on the Hudson River side of Manhattan or the East River side.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, they\u2019re significantly downriver from me, but when they shot the very high aerial blasts, I could see them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now they haven\u2019t been on the nearer Hudson River side for a decade or so, but I wasn\u2019t terribly excited about my shooting prospects because of all the redevelopment (tall residential buildings) that has been going on in Hackensack.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was pretty sure I\u2019d see nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

But lookee here:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Above the new building and above the clouds, it appears that all 5 barges\u2019 fireworks made it through!<\/span><\/p>\n

So this was a pretty successful Fourth of July night of shooting. But that last image wasn\u2019t the final shot.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Just after midnight, I saw something attached to the window that I had just closed a little while earlier. I could see its outline, but there was no light on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I ran for a flashlight, but it was hard to hold it to illuminate this thing properly through glass without getting a reflection and also exposing it properly and taking a picture with the other hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a couple of failures, I got this:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Aw\u2026\u2026.ain\u2019t it cute?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lastly, the video\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n

After editing, I took the two videos and stitched them together for a 25-minute flick.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then I watched it. I actually started to get bored seeing the same fireworks going off, one after the other for most of that time. Who would want to watch all that? Plus, it used up over 2GB of space.<\/span><\/p>\n

Time to get smart(-ish).<\/span><\/p>\n

Since it was a relief when I got to see each location’s finales, why not just combine those?<\/span><\/p>\n

So I did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are almost 2 minutes (and only 138MB of space) of non-stop blasts with the County leading off and the hometown closing the show. Of course, you should have the volume turned up, but make sure it’s cranked up to 10 at the very end, when – through a quarter mile of trees and residential buildings – you’ll hear the ovation from the cheering crowd at Foschini Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

BTW – you may hear the sound of my cell taking stills during the Hackensack part.<\/span><\/p>\n