The Great New York City Children's Day Fireworks Scandal
Why, you may have asked, do we keep telling you that there will be fireworks to see each weekend, and then, when you venture down to the river or up to the rooftop, you find no fireworks at all?
Malfeasance. Potentially mismanagement. Possibly even great evil. Perhaps even a deep-seated hatred of children?
According to (the recently dismembered) Time Out, Saturday, June 18th was to be “Children’s Day NYC
, at the South Street Seaport. (Not to be confused with Missing Children’s Day, which is held on May 25th, and is totally different.) “More free family entertainment closes the day with the Target Fireworks Spectacular,” they and many other publications claimed.
Number of fireworks on June 18th? ZERO.
That is because this date was incorrectly listed, in multiple venues. In fact, “Children’s Day NYC” takes place on June 25th, “rain or shine,” according to the organizer’s site and Facebook page. (The event is conducted by Dima Productions, who also produce the River to River festival and the New York Comedy Festival.)
What’s worse? “When someone commented on the Children’s Day Facebook page that they brought their kids to the Seaport on the 18th only to find no Children’s Day, they were told that the mixup was due to the fact that some publications didn’t do proper fact checking,” writes one concerned local. And then this Facebook exchange was nuked entirely.
Well, mistakes happen. But then!
Stunningly, at some point on the 25th, the sentence about fireworks was scrubbed from the event’s website. Above, the Google cache of the site reveals the truth. Oh yes, there were to be fireworks. But the fireworks were disappeared. (“On Saturday,” recalls a concerned neighbor and friend to children, “someone asked about the location of the fireworks sometime around 6, and was matter-of-factly informed that there wouldn’t be any (this exchange has also since been scrubbed from their Facebook wall). No indication of a cancellation, implying instead there never had been any planned.”)
Who are these monsters who would do this? And to the children, no less! Lesson learned: don’t ever believe there will be fireworks until you actually see things being shot from a barge. Maybe there’ll be some on the 4th of July! And maybe not.