Expectations are a tricky thing.
You expect something and it becomes organized, ordered, defined, even routine.
Worse, you expect something and if that thing in question doesn’t match the level of your expectations it becomes, by definition, a failure.
In one fell swoop our expectations make our lives sadder and more boring. But I don’t want to talk about the pitfalls of the human condition, no, I would like to converse on the positive!
Earlier this month, in San Diego, a gross technical mishap caused a Fourth of July fireworks display to launch about 18-minutes worth of fireworks simultaneously, all at the exact same moment. The result saw five separate locations all triggered at once causing gigantic, thunderous clouds of dancing bright lights that both delighted and shocked onlookers for about a total of 30 seconds.
Now you can see dozens upon dozens of pictures and video taken from the infamous fireworks display. There was no shortage of news stories—local, national, and international—reporting on the hilarious disaster that was the Fourth of July San Diego fireworks display. Several key words were thrown around quite often by the media in the wake of the fireworks glitch, such as “failure,” “botched,” “bust,” and “ruined” but none was more pervasive than the all-too-popular: “disappointment.”
Of course, news outlets keen on cramming innocuous twitter posts into their stories would also present various snippets of wisdom such as, “OMG, what the hell? There better be more. Lame.”
In total the show cost approximately US $400,000, not an unusual figure for San Diego’s annual Big Bay Boom celebration – an event known as one of the larger and more complex fireworks displays to take place on Independence Day.
Said August Santore Sr., co-owner of the Garden State Fireworks company, “What I feel bad about is the people of San Diego [ . . . ] I felt terrible. But you can’t unring a bell.”
Garden State had been commissioned to carry out the fireworks display, one of hundreds of shows across the U.S. the fireworks company typically gets hired to coordinate every year. In Garden State’s storied history they have provided the pyrotechnics for the Statue of Liberty Bicentennial Celebration in 1976 and the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary — they are one of the oldest American manufacturers of display fireworks.
According to Santore, Garden State intends to apologize to the people of San Diego by way of a second, free-of-charge, fireworks show that would take place several months in the future. Founder of the Big Bay Boom H. P. Purdon echoed this sentiment, vowing to “make it up” to the city in the near future.
“When you have 20,000 fireworks going off in 15 seconds, it’s quite a show,” said Purdon. “But it was not the show we planned.”
Indeed, not the show that was planned, but still quite a show. Arguably a more memorable show than either Garden State or Purdon could have orchestrated – because it was unexpected.
Left out of this whole experience, as it was presented and framed by the mainstream media was that this infamous Fourth of July fireworks display in San Diego was, well, undeniably cool. The fact is the negative attention this technical mis-queue received the world over was and is only half of the story.
Watch the videos posted around the Internet and you’ll see and hear people in awe of something; they hoot, they holler, they say “Fuck yeah,” they go “Wooo!” Not overly articulate but assuredly positive, having just seen something that is truly unique.
The fireworks display was able to find itself a wider audience fairly quickly, too, as the videos posted online reached four million views within the first week. The amount of cumulative views has since continued to skyrocket, having doubled that number with well over 8 million views in the month of July.
And to this I say bravo, Internet; you have successfully allowed an event that was labelled anathema by the mainstream media to rise above the negativity and shine for what it truly is: a unique, unrehearsed, awe-inspiring moment.
Sure it was all triggered by pure accident. But like Purdon says, it was quite a show.
This is a case in which something didn’t fail expectations but, rather, exceed them by defying convention. And make no mistake, hundreds of miniature explosives rocketing into the sky, ricocheting off each other in brilliant colour and overwhelming sound such that it creates a lasting image the likes of which the world had never seen before – that is a damn cool way to defy convention.
Click here for a YouTube sampling of the San Diego event (and also, turn your speakers down a tad).
