My childhood memories of Independence Day in Suburbia are full of sweeping vistas of far-away fireworks blasting away in the night sky. Concurrently, my father would make sure I always had a sparkler–or three–burstin’ away in my hand. It couldn’t be better than this, I thought.

At the same time, I entertained every young boy’s fantasy of becoming a fireworks man, setting off huge artillery shells that’d envelope half the sky in blazing glories of red, blue, gold, and all the other colors. But no; it was just a fantasy. As good, upstanding American citizens, we must always concede control of any airborne fireworks to the professionals, and sit back to enjoy the show.

Bollocks.

Last night, half of Capitol Hill (and pretty much the rest of D.C. and Maryland) blithely ignored fireworks regulations and turned my neighborhood into a war zone. Baghdad? Saigon? Beirut? (DCist has some tidbits on this.)

Debris coated the roads and sidewalks, and I even felt a couple pieces of shrapnel hit me throughout the night. The sky was ablaze with a random assortment of starbursts, Saturn missiles, 200s, 300s, 500s, Patriotics, Black Cats, Phantoms, you name it. Kids were running wild holding bottle rockets with lit fuses with their hands.

A group of kids across the block set off what they claimed was approximately $200 worth of fireworks, purchased near the Maryland-Delaware border. Well worth every dollar, they said. The only mishap was when one shell exploded on the ground instead of up in the air, giving all of us spectators a pretty good scare (but at least I was standing far away).

Cops drove by whole families launching shells–and these law enforcement officers were happily enjoying the show and not lifting a finger to enforce city regulations. It couldn’t have been better than this.

I’ve done the Mall thing (pre-9/11 when they didn’t have all those security checkpoints and metal detectors). It’s awesome and beautiful–everyone should do it at least once.

But there’s nothing like the thrill of an entire community setting aside class and racial divisions and gentrification worries in order to collectively disobey a nanny-state law and create our own Independence Day entertainment (provided that no limbs get blown off). Power to the people!