The California Joy Killing Machine

Monday, April 20, 2026

The very latest, “As the nation prepares for its 250th Independence Day celebration, a decades-long California Fourth of July fireworks tradition that has raised millions for local children’s programs is going dark this year after the California Coastal Commission rejected a final effort to keep it alive, citing environmental concerns to protect the bay.”  Immensely unfortunate, but terribly unsurprising.

This story concerns the fireworks display in Long Beach Harbor.   For decades my wife an I attended the largest fireworks display on the west coast at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena – just a few miles north of Long Beach.  Last year friends reported that the 45-50 minute spectacular was now a 10 minute drone show which was nice, but hardly worth fighting crowds of over 100,000 people to attend.

Even more interesting:

The decision stands in contrast to other approvals by the commission, including a permit granted to SeaWorld allowing up to 40 nights of fireworks.

“They get 40 nights in Mission Bay. All I’m asking for is 20 minutes — it doesn’t make any sense,” Morris said.

Morris, 78, also pushed back on the environmental concerns cited by the commission, pointing to years of testing around the event.

Let’s cut through the smokescreen (pun intended) and get to the meat of the matter.  “Environmental concerns” are often excuses, not science.  (Note the reference to “testing” – the article explains they have demonstrated no lasting environmental damage on numerous occasions.)

The Long Beach show happens on a harbor surrounded by downtown Long Beach with countless condos and apartments, many of them very upscale.  Likewise the Rose Bowl sits at the bottom of an arroyo (old river bed for those of you not fluent in spanglish) surrounded by some of the most luxurious and oldest homes in Southern California.  For years the people that live in these areas have complained about the crowds, the noise and the inconvenience produced by events like these fireworks shows.  The Rose Bowl is severely limited in the number of events it can house annually as any event disturbs the neighborhood immensely.  There is a constant battle between the residents and the operators of the Bowl.  Likewise downtown Long Beach just hosted a major Indy Car event this weekend which shuts the whole waterfront area down to turn it into the race track.  The residents are highly inconvenienced.

Sea World on Mission Bay, in contrast, is surrounded only by hotels, most of which are full of people that are there to go to Sea World anyway.

These permits and disputes are about neighborhood politics and have very little to do with “environmental concerns.”  The permit granters, whether it be the CCC in the Long Beach case or the City of Pasadena for the Bowl have to have someplace to hang their hats when the lobbying from the residents becomes more than they can bear and “environmental concerns” are a convenient hat rack.

What’s sad about this is that the local residents, through their unwillingness to be inconvenienced for even a few days here and there, rob tens or hundreds of thousands of people of great joy and celebration.  They act like the robber barons or landholding aristocrats of old.  People plan for weeks to attend these events, often because they are inexpensive or even free, and it is all they can afford.  The residents that complain so vociferously could easily head to the mountains for a vacation for a week.

But most of all these residents put their own convenience ahead of celebrations of the nation.  America is indeed the land of the free.  They are free to express their discontent and lobby to change it.  But when it comes at the cost of a celebration of that very freedom, can such freedom be preserved?  Or does it mark a transition from a free community to millions of mini-tyrannies?

Above all else, this “me first” attitude is what has made California what it is – unlivable.