Why Independence Day is the Most Suburban of Holidays

July 3, 2012 by

I’ve written before that Independence Day is pretty much the best holiday of the year.  Compared to other holidays, it’s a breeze. You hang out by the pool, throw some stuff on a grill, and watch other people blow stuff up.  You don’t have to do a lot of traveling, or feel the pressure to visit family you don’t really like, or do a lot of difficult cooking (4 different types of stuffing!).

But something else recently occurred to me: Independence Day is the ultimate suburban holiday.  It’s the one day of the year when it is incontestably, incontrovertibly better to live in the suburbs than in the city.  Why?

  • You need a pool.  You can’t celebrate the Fourth of July properly without being able to take a dip.  You want to spend the day in Central Park sweating your face off, that’s fine, but after a few hours you’re going to be thinking about jumping the fence on the reservoir or taking a wrench to the nearest fire hydrant.  Otherwise, you can go to one of those city pools, which are apparently very exciting.
  • You need a grill. And not one of those crappy portables that you can put out on your fire escape in violation of like a hundred building codes, which can barely singe a decent piece of meat.  You need a big, manly barbecue.
  • You need outdoor space. Now, some lucky people in the city might have a small backyard, or a deck or something, but that’s not enough for a proper Fourth of July party. You need grass. You need places to sit and take a nap in the sun.
No, if you want to do the Fourth of July properly, you need to be in the suburbs. It’s like the ultimate revenge for us suburbanites — you want to live in the city, with your hot people and your great clubs and fantastic restaurants and your culture and all that?  Fine, but on the Fourth of July, you’re going to be BEGGING to come visit me so you can sit by my pool and eat my hamburgers.  BEGGING, I tell you!
And that’s really what happens. You know how difficult it is for me to get people to come visit us out here in the suburbs?  Impossible.  No one wants to schlep for our annual super bowl party, much less a random weekend night.  Why would they leave the city to come hang out with us. The only hook I have for the Fourth of July:  a pool (not even mine, but my parents’ house is ten minutes away and well-provisioned), a grill, and a great view of the fireworks from my condo in Nyack.  Suddenly, people who won’t take my calls the rest of the year are lining up to hop a train to Tarrytown.
Sweet Revenge!!!
Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , ,

Why the Fourth of July is the Best Holiday of the Year — Particularly When You Can Watch Fireworks from Your Home

July 1, 2010 by

I love the Fourth of July.  It’s absolutely the best holiday of the year, much better than Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Christmas is great, particularly when you’re a kid.  But as an adult, Christmas is mostly a big pain.  You have to go buy a bunch of presents, stress about whether you need to buy presents for this or that person.  You have to figure out how much to tip various people in your life  (the guy who delivers the newspaper, seriously?) .  And I always end up having to go to like a million holiday parties all through December, which just leaves me a big soggy fat mess.  And, of course, not everyone celebrates Christmas, so we all end up in that ugly “if you say ‘Merry Christmas’ you must hate the Jews, and if you say ‘Happy Holidays’ you murdered the baby Jesus” fight every year.

Thanksgiving is great, and everyone who matters (i.e., Americans) celebrate it, but it’s also kind of a pain.  Lots of travel, all that cooking, and half the time I end up getting sick and lying on the bathroom floor groaning all day Friday.  That’s not a fun holiday.

New Year’s Eve sucks.  Don’t talk to me about New Year’s Eve.

Memorial Day and Labor Day are just three day weekends.  One of them starts the summer, the other ends it, and I can never remember which is which.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t count. If you don’t get the day off, it’s not a holiday. Sorry, honey.

The Fourth of July is just awesome:

  • We all get to celebrate. You say “Happy Fourth of July” to someone, you don’t start a culture war.
  • The weather is great.  A summer holiday.  Sadly, no football like Thanksgiving, but you can’t have everything.
  • It’s easy.  To celebrate the Fourth, you need a pool, and a barbecue.  You’re done.  You want to get a couple of sparklers, go nuts.  Throwing hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill is nothing compared to figuring out a stuffing recipe for a turkey.
  • No obligations. No church, no temple, no getting dressed up.  Bathing suit.  T shirt.  That’s the uniform.  I know that some towns have a reading of the Declaration of Independence, which sounds just wonderfully patriotic but a horrible distraction from eating more hotdogs.
  • It’s not a “family” holiday.  No traveling 200 miles in traffic to see that uncle who put his creepy hand on your knee when you were 12, or your mother’s cousin’s estranged aunt or whatever.  If you like your family, spend the day with them.  If not, no one’s going to guilt you for blowing them off.

And, of course, you get fireworks.  Glorious fireworks.  The sun goes down, the fireworks go off, you eat some watermelon, you relish the fact that you’ve got another two months of summer.

So I love the Fourth of July.  In fact, it was one of the real, if minor, selling points of this condo we bought.  From our terrace we have a full frontal view of Memorial Park in Nyack, which is where the village has its fireworks show every year.  It’s like having an apartment on the Upper East Side overlooking the East River fireworks, except, of course, that it’s not.  It’s in the suburbs.

So not the same.  But fireworks are fireworks, and this year we’ll be looking at them from about 200 feet in the sky, almost eye level with where the explosions happen.  And I guess it’s not as good as having that Upper East Side penthouse, but it’s a lot better than standing on a crowded, hot street in Manhattan shoulder-to-shoulder with about a million other sweaty people and craning my neck to see the show.  I’ll be in a chair.  Drinking.  So that’s pretty good.

Happy Fourth of July!

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,