The Fourth of July is the pyrotechnic industry's Black Friday. So every
Independence Day (and New Year's Eve and Super Bowl Sunday) finds Jon
Berson, general manager of Sacramento, Calif.-based PPA Spectacular,
hard at work lobbing munitions up to 1200 ft. into the air. While he
misses out on watermelon and hot dogs, he does get a seat 150 ft. from
the action. (The rest of us stay a quarter-mile or more away.) But
Berson doesn't have much time to gaze at the show. "I'm pretty busy,
watching the computer, looking for the next 15 devices that are going
to fire. As long as the stuff leaves the pipe okay, I'm happy. I'm not
going to look up and go, 'Oh that's a pretty one.'"
What It's Like
"We feel the concussion
of the mortars going off and we're being pelted with all kinds of
debris falling on our heads, some of it hot, some of it not. Sometimes
a show feels like it takes 2 seconds, sometimes it feels like 4 hours."
—Jon Berson