Best firework's at the waterfront, in order:

#1) Rose Festival
#2) Cinco De Mayo
#3) Fourth of July

The first two are fun, the last; not so much.

My recommendation next year for you on the 4th, unpaid intern, is to make a little trip to Vancouver, WA and stock up on the goods you can't buy in Oregon and then have YOUR OWN show! It's pretty much what everyone else in Portland does for the 4th.

But... the Oregonian says I'll burn my neighborhood down!

I don't know what to believe anymore!

...

...

Do they sell mortars up there?

discuss my ass unpaid intern.

yes they did suck. especially the piddly little last one that was obviously a mistake after their the supposed finale.

Your ass is akin to the surface of a full moon--a mottled visage that gently shines through the charcoal black wisps weaved over its pale glow, one that suggests ominous portent for all who gaze upon its circumference.

Except that the moon doesn't smell like rancid taco meat.

Fuuuck, Unpaid Intern--I'm glad we brought you on.

How interesting ARE fireworks, anyway? I recently moved here as well - though I've been lingering in the doorway for almost a decade before finally walking in, and my great granddaddy chopped down the first Indian in the Oregon Territory or something so don't bring it - and I think maybe it's just that this town is kind of fireworks-PROOF. I watched them from the Hawthorne Bridge, with a charming blend of the friendly rainbow of folks, and what I found more interesting was the vibe of the crowd, less like riding an elevator with 5000 people (Seattle, S.F., L.A.) than sitting down to a business meeting with them before you'd been introduced. There we were, and it was a long hike from the end of the bridge so there were no TV jockeys or mammoth coolers or giant hordes of tiny children like somewhere more drive-inable might have hosted. The crowd was just cool, and orderly, and among friends (or flying solo, and phoning out over the precipitously holey grate of the bridge), and waiting to see something not so much super-fun, I think, as what to me the spanish word for fun suggests, 'divertido'. A diversion. When they began, it was as if we were perched on the rim of a giant bowl, the from the bottom of which the fireworks were being shot into the air before us. On the high top of the Marquam Bridge, semis were slowing to watch and were nearly elegant moving across that high curve. Twice someone shot a red flare up from the south side of the river, and as it drifted slowly down it was actually more interesting than the show itself, twirling down and illuminating the black bottom of the bowl, everyone meditating on its slowness whether they wanted to or not. Not long after the second flare, I realized I didn't want to shuffle through a crowd, I wanted to be walking briskly, so I started to go, glancing at the show over my shoulder, watching for bicycles from behind me. The crowd under the 5 was raucous and cheering everything - or maybe it was just that their sound echoed from off the concrete abutments, as did the percussions from the fireworks, giving it all a more CNN vibe than it had over the water. The show ended, everybody left and got back to their business and true calling: getting drunk. Portland has time for fireworks, but not a lot.

It's hard to beat sitting lakeside and watching the fireworks over Oswego. Snotty elites or not, they pack a bunch of shells onto that barge, and it echoes like a muthafucka between the walls of that bowl.