Asian cultures all over the world light firecrackers to create a wall of smoke and fire to scare away evil spirits of the past year. Mayor Giuliani had banned firecrackers in NYC as a safety precaution but in the aftermath of 9/11 he lifted the ban and allowed the Firecracker Celebration to once again become a central part of the Lunar New Year festivities in 2002.
A crowd of over 500,000 was expected, I wouldn’t say it reached that number, perhaps the cold was to blame but a good number developed none the less, a few children were dressed in traditional attire, guys on the street were selling bangers which you could hear going off everywhere and a few Lion dancers jiggled their big heads and wiggled their brightly coloured tails.
We (this week Simon and I had some 26 Weeks joiners, lovely friends Ben and Will) found a perch on the top of a wall and watched as 600,000 small firecrackers were set off creating a very loud display that lasted five minutes with a few fireworks thrown in.
F also stands for freezing which is what we were after waiting over an hour to see the evil spirits scurry away so we decided that F should end with Freemans www.freemansrestaurant.com where we toasted the New Year whilst defrosting over a superb artichoke dip and other tasty delights fit for St Valentine himself.
Next week: G = Graffiti
was hoping F was going to be 'Flight of the Conchords', but still good all the same..... be careful doing that graffiti next week :-)
ReplyDeletecousin Andrew x