4th of July with the NYPD
I tagged along with my friend Ada for a firework display but didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into.
It’s the fourth of July and I’m being escorted by the NYPD to the top of a building that Jennifer Lopez shot her last music video in.
Until I make it to the roof and finally see the sprawling city landscape that is NYC and the East River separating us from Manhattan, I’m not fully convinced Ada and I aren’t being kidnapped.
Ada has been working in Boston all summer, but came down to NYC for a week with the other interns at her company for the holiday. She’s been staying with me the past few days in my Brooklyn apartment, and I’ve been mooching off of her Corporate Barbie benefits like free lunch, great views of the city at the top of the skyscraper, free snacks we fill our bags with before going to Bryant Park movie night, and now, her connections.
One of those other interns in Boston this summer is originally an NYC native, and told all the interns that his family could get us all to a great place in the city to watch the firework show. The vagueness was all he supplied us with, and all I really needed to throw on my Baggu bag and once again play the role of a tech intern instead of an art student.
As an NYC Native, I figured his family would know of a hidden park along the river, maybe a hill somewhere with a good view of the sky. No matter where we would be watching the display from, I figured it would be better than me trying to figure out a spot. Afterall, I was the one who initially thought his family might be taking us to a “hill” in the middle of NYC to sit on.
We all met up at the office (to steal more free snacks) before taking a packed subway for 14 stops to get where we needed to be. We were packing in the cars like sardines and if I didn’t know the other interns before, I surely do now, pressed up against them in the subway. After our stop, we still had quite a long way to walk, where we kept getting split up because the 11 of us all wanted to go at different speeds. I, for one, was keeping our leader, NYC Native, within an arm's length. When he tried to cross the street and stepped out in front of a car, Ada and I obediently followed. We were going to watch that firework show.
We arrived at a space that appeared to be hosting a 4th of July party in an area that looked like a pier, but there were far too many people there to be able to tell what anything was. Even though we were far back in the crowd, it was apparent that we would still have a view of the fireworks in the sky over the crowd’s head and in between buildings. I had lectured myself for a long time this morning that watching a firework display in NYC wasn’t going to be the same as watching the shows back home. It is inevitable that there would be large crowds and obstructed views of the fireworks in a big city.
Back home, every July in Missouri, my family would drive out to my mom’s friend’s house for the holiday. Her and her husband lived in the country and had quite a bit of land that my brother, Caden, and I liked to explore in a golf cart with the husband and hit golf balls into the forest at the edge of their property. We always thought they must be filthy rich if they could buy golf balls to only use them once like that. When it would start to get dark outside, we would set up lawn chairs on the back porch and 100 yards away, outside of a little shed exclusively used to hold fireworks, two men would shoot them off. If there was even a little bit of a breeze on the summer night, you could feel the ashes fall down on you. I had to wear noise canceling headphones up until the age of 15 because we were so close to the explosions. Everyone there was also connected somehow. My mom’s friend, the friend’s cousin, the cousin’s friend’s sister, the uncle of the grocery store owner on the corner in town.
As I looked around the pier that had to have around 50,000 people on or around it, I realized that the only person I truly knew was Ada. I had looser connections to the other interns, but if I were to count them in, then I knew 11/50,000. I was connected to 0.022% of the people here. That’s a lot different from a Missouri 100%.
This was the math I was attempting to do in my head when a police officer walked up to NYC Native, Ada, and me, as we were still at the front of the group, and said, “You kids need to follow me.”
Although I have not committed a crime, nor have I really done anything in the past week except write and run around the park, my first instinct was to bolt. The advantage of only being connected to 0.022% of the people was that the odds seemed to be in my favor if a policeman decided to pursue me in this mess of people. Before I could take such action, NYC Native followed the man’s direction and since I was still keen on keeping him within an arm's length, I decided to follow. The other interns followed as well. We walked in silence to the door of a building with no sign and very elaborate locks. As we made our way up the first staircase, I started recording a video inconspicuously. If this man was taking us to the top of the building for a better view, I wanted it on video. If we were all about to get murdered, hopefully this video would somehow get uploaded to the cloud where the police would find it, recover evidence from the video, and jail the killers. At least that’s how it works on Hawaii 5-0.
I’m aware that I sound a bit paranoid, but I am quite a paranoid person. Plus, it was dark outside, nobody was speaking so all I could hear was the shuffle of tennis shoes against the tile floor, and we seemed to be going through a very oddly built building. We went up the first flight of stairs that opened up into a small room. A new key unlocked a barnyard door that slid out of our way and revealed a much bigger room with wooden floors and nothing in it except five ladders laying on the floor.
The police officer spoke for the first time since telling us to follow him, “Jennifer Lopez just filmed her new music video here last week.”
Ada and I exchanged looks that bordered on confused, impressed, and excited.
We walked across the large room to a stark white hallway with more police officers guarding the doors farther down the hall to climb another set of stairs before getting on an elevator that took us to the 6th floor. Getting off the elevator, we got off into another hallway before unlocking the door to suite 607. It was an office space with only one couch sitting in the space. The man walked over to a window and opened it up to reveal a completely empty patio the size of a football field.
Ada and I squealed in excitement to the lit up city in front of us and the entirely unobstructed view of the river and the barges on the river below. When we made it to the end, we could look down and see the hoards of people down below trying to squeeze their way closer to the river for a better view.
I turned back to NYC Native to find him shaking the cops hand, smiling, saying, “Thanks lot, dad!”
That connection, I probably should have figured out a lot earlier.
THe view from the top was spectacular before the fireworks even started. There weren’t many other people on the roof, just one other family joined us up on the spacious roof. We were all leaned up against the bars at the very edge to get as close as possible. The fireworks went off for what seemed like an hour. Everytime I would think to myself, “That had to have been the finale,” Macy’s said “not quite.”
It turns out that Macy’s spends around $6 million on just fireworks every year, and there are generally around 3 million in-person spectators and 8 million people watching on TV. To be completely honest with you, I didn’t even know it was a thing. So imagine my surprise to stumble upon a rooftop so close to the action that I could see the logo on the side of the barges. And imagine NYC Native’s surprise when I turned and asked him, “Why does it say Macy’s on the side of the ship?”
With fireworks imported from 13 different countries around the world, the Macy’s NYC firework display certainly wasn’t anything like the displays back home, but I wouldn’t trade my Missouri 100% childhood for anything.
Yours truly,
Calihan
p.s. On the walk back to my apartment, Ada and I came across a sign that said, "We love NYPD." We tried to get a selfie with it, but a car drove by right as we were taking it, so you can't really make out the sign. Anyways, all that to say, after our experience, I had a lot of love for NYPD.