Third of July Festivities

Chicago has its big 4th of July fireworks display on the 3rd, and it coincides with the last weekend of the annual "Taste of Chicago" festival, one of the most popular in the city. I don't attend the "Taste" because the idea of eating standing up in huge crowds of people on a hot July day just doesn't appeal to me for some reason. I do like fireworks, though.

People are encouraged not to drive on days of big gatherings downtown, especially the third (this year a million and a half people gathered at the lakefront). Chicago has a decent public transportation system with a great suburban rail network, there is no reason to have to drive downtown most days and on summer days with large events it is almost impossible to find a place to park if you do.

For some reason, people don't listen to the warning, and downtown turns into a parking lot. On days like that I really don't envy emergency crews trying to get through the mess.

The evening for me was mostly a chance to play with my camera - one thing I did learn, it's hard to get a good representative picture of a million and a half people at night while being jostled in the crowd (for the fireworks I used a tripod, but for all the other shots it wasn't really feasible).

(I'm also learning that Blogger is probably not the best or easiest program to use to post and format text and pictures together - getting the different pictures situated around the text is a chore.)