Fourth of July Festivities

AV had some friends up for the Fourth of July. They arrived late Thursday night and were planning to leave around lunch Monday (July 4). We did the normal "visiting Michigan" type of activities, or at least, normal for people we know. We went shopping at the thrift stores, we went to the beach, we had bonfires, and we went kayaking. A pretty solid weekend.

I found out that the town we live in has a Fourth of July parade and I wanted to go. We went to the Christmas parade and it was a pretty fun time, so I figured the Fourth of July parade would be larger. I was correct. The parade lasted about an hour with all the normal parade type things. You know... dogs in costumes, scary clowns, kids on decorated bikes, the Asparagus Queen. It was a good time and there were a bunch of antique automobiles, which I always love.

After AV's friends left, we watched a movie (okay, AV watched, I took a nap) and headed down to Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids was supposed to also have a huge parade and then a series of free concerts leading up to the fireworks and a concert by We the Kings.

The parade was not as big/exciting as the parade where we live, but it did have a few awesome bits. Mainly the "float" from the Public Museum. It was an antique truck with a self playing organ in the bed.

LOVE IT.

After the parade we watched a bit of the free concert in Rosa Park Circle in front of the art museum. The first band was fairly terrible... They were clearly still in, or just out of, high school and it showed. You couldn't hear the vocals, what you could hear was poorly written, and the music was not so subtly "borrowed" from other popular bands. The next band, thankfully!, was much better. Not wanting to get sucked into the third band's performance, we headed to dinner at the Asian restaurant up the street.

We've been to this restaurant before, and while the food is EXCELLENT, the service is TERRIBLE. We're not strangers to this type of behavior though, so at this point we pretty much just accept it. And again, the food itself was wonderful, so I guess I can't complain too much?

We went back to the free concerts where each band got progressively better than the last. We watched the bands as well as what we came to refer to as "Creepy Drug Addict Guy". There was a big black guy dancing around in the "lawn" area of the park. He wasn't dancing in the normal sense... He was dancing... like a creepy drug addict. Every so often he would lean over and appear to begin to pass out. It was pretty terrifying.

There was an additional creepy dude with a giant bubble wand. He was on the other side of the park from us but the bubbles rose up over the crowd and it looked awesome.

Gigantic bubbles!

We also watched someone paint a painting. Again, it was on the other side of the park so we didn't really get to watch, but I saw the end result. He had painted the Statue of Liberty and a sunset sky. That would be pretty awesome on it's own, but it was made more awesome by the fact that he was painting the piece on one of those spinny canvases!

This is just some random guy on YouTube, but this is the type of canvas the painter in the park was using.

The last bit of entertainment we witnessed was a set of siblings who had balloon hats. Earlier in the night a different sibling was playing with one of the hats, attempting to catch the end of the hat as it sat on his head. He looked exactly like a donkey with a carrot on a string. Later his brother (or possibly cousin) decided this activity was worth trying out.

heeheeeheeeeee



Finally it was time for the fireworks! I was wondering if we should go somewhere else but there were gaps between the buildings and we assumed that you would be able to see the fireworks between and over the buildings. Nope. We started walking (along with thousands of other people) towards the river. Somehow the river was much further away than we expected and we seemed to be missing most, if not all, of the fireworks. I didn't want to wander too far from the park though, because We the Kings were supposed to come on right after the fireworks. So we tried a couple of places, all to no avail. We stopped with the rest of the crowds, in the middle of the street, to watch. Too bad you could only see about half of every other firework. It was terribly dissapointing.

Instead of missing out on everything, we headed back to the park to get a good spot to watch We the Kings. I got what I thought was a good spot. As it turns out, the park (which is also used as an iceskating rink in the winter) has no incline in front of the concert shell. So, while I was very close to the band, I couldn't see anything. And, to add insult to injury, some guy who was probably like a hundred feet tall kept trying to push in front of me. But, the music was good.

There was no encore which we thought was strange, but we started heading to the car. We noticed flashing lights and sirens. There were police cars at the park now, and the officers were using the megaphones to tell people to "PLEASE LEAVE THE ROSA PARK AREA". I thought this was really rude, the concert had just ended, there was no way we would be able to get out of the city yet with all those people about, so why couldn't we stick around the park area? But the police were insistant. So we started to wander about.

As it turns out, we were made to leave the area because two people were shot in a fight. I guess that's why there was no encore...

And then... something else happened. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow to read about it!

Cheers,

Red