Independence Day:
Fireworks lit up the sky over Fisherman’s Wharf as thousands braved the fog and chilly wind to celebrate the nation’s birthday. Redwood City held the holiday’s largest parade in Northern California.
San Francisco marked the Fourth of July in classic (local) summer fashion — with cold fog and stiff winds but doublebarreled fireworks nonetheless.
The show began at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday with a colorful fusillade above Fisherman’s Wharf that was launched from Municipal Pier and barges docked off Pier 39. The crowds along the Embarcadero and Jefferson Street erupted in cheers, shrugging off any partisan disputes.
The chilly, overcast evening didn’t keep people from spending their holiday on the waterfront. By 7:30, the lawn at Aquatic Park was comfortably full with families, couples and groups of friends who showed up early to stake out space.
Many were tourists who decided to make the fireworks — and the gathering fog — part of their itineraries.
“I looked it up, saw fireworks on the bay, and we thought it would be fun,” said Sarah Franz, who had arrived Monday from the Dallas-Fort Worth area with her brother, Jonathan.
It was their first visit to the Bay Area, and they already had seen the Haight-Ashbury and Chinatown. In the latter, Jonathan had purchased a starsand-stripes hoodie, which he kept tightly zipped.
Any complaints so far? “It’s too cold,” Jonathan said. Sarah agreed: “We’re used to 100degree weather.”
On a bench nearby, the Gama family of Riverside was huddled tight after polishing off a takeout pizza for warmth.
“We’ve been here three hours — too long,” Caressa Gama said as her husband, Marco, and sister-in-law. Victoria, laughed.
There were no real regrets, though. The family often travels to the Bay Area and decided to make a quick drive up and back to spend their first July Fourth in San Francisco.
“We figured it would be something new,” Victoria said, wearing a weathered Giants cap. “I always love San Francisco.”
Monica Sante had a shorter drive: She was one of a group of five adults and three children who came from Richmond for the fireworks.
“We were thinking about a different place to go,” said Sante, who spent last year’s July Fourth in Hercules. They shrugged off the fog, but not another feature of today’s Bay Area: “The traffic was horrible. Parking, too.”
An hour before the fireworks started, Pier 39 was jammed and the crowd was growing by the minute. The wind was picking up while the temperature dropped, and the line for the Biscoff coffee cart was 20 people long.
“We knew it would be cold — but not this cold!,” Kristi Patterson of Minneapolis laughed, knit cap pulled almost to her eyes.
But the Fourth of July is more than fireworks, and crowds across the Bay Area gathered Tuesday for music, picnics and parades.
In Redwood City, the view from Melissa Magallón’s pink beach chair showed a crowd of thousands gathered for the city’s annual Fourth of July parade, which featured college marching bands, unicycle riders and local businesses puttering down Arguello Street in flatbed trucks.
Touted as the biggest Independence Day parade in Northern California, the Redwood City event started with the blast of a cannon at 10 a.m. and went on for two hours in the scorching heat.
Vendors hawked Polish dogs, snow cones and beer. Spectators crammed the sidewalks with strollers and lawn chairs. Nearby on Broadway, a classic car exhibit featured gleaming Chevrolet Impalas, boxy Plymouths and Mustangs with their hoods open to expose exquisite vintage engines.
Melissa, 6, wore patriotic colors to celebrate the occasion: a puffy red and blue bow and flip-flop sandals with red straps, revealing her red-andblue polished toenails. By 11 a.m. she was clinging to her mother, Maribel Magallón, and craning her neck to see the dancing tree mascot from Stanford University.
“The tree — that’s our favorite part,” Maribel Magallón said in Spanish.
Like Melissa, many spectators at the Redwood City parade dressed up to celebrate their American heritage. Some wore Stetson hats with star and stripe patterns. Others sported solid blue or red polo shirts. Stephanie Merlo, 26, had tied a flag bandanna around the neck of her lanky German shepherd.
“I’ve been coming to this parade for years,” said Merlo, who grew up in Redwood City and has attended the event so many times that she’s memorized the order of the floats.
“The chile pepper, that’s kind of new,” she said, pointing to a truck blasting cumbia music, with a large sign advertising the Redwood City Salsa Festival in September. “They added that one a couple years ago.”
But otherwise, little has changed since Merlo’s childhood. She was among many people for whom the 78-yearold holiday celebration had become a family tradition.
This year’s July Fourth celebration was awash in civic pride, with 200 organizations and businesses vying to best represent Redwood City’s history and diversity.
“I like it because it’s funky,” said Lanah Hotchkiss, who came to the parade with her husband, Ross, for the fifth time. “And because all the local community groups get a chance to come out.”