Macy's capped off the fifth night of official fireworks from "surprise" locations in NYC with a nationally-broadcast display from the top of the Empire State Building in Midtown, Manhattan on Independence Day. The show, which aired on NBC, began with a montage of iconic New York City landmarks, like the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, and... the Posco Tower-Songdo in South Korea, which you can see below at about one minute and 25 seconds into the program:
A still frame from the NBC July 4th fireworks broadcast, which showed footage of a tower in South Korea during a segment showing NYC landmarks. To be fair, it does resemble the World Trade Center?
For the fireworks segment, NBC edited together footage from the previous socially-distanced displays from earlier in the week to create a somewhat impressive all-city fireworks TV show that culminated with the Empire State Building's Saturday night pyrotechnics.
Reactions to the four minute Empire State Building display ranged from "depressing," as one Gothamist reader put it, to "nice" and "it's different." More spectacular perhaps were the illegal DIY fireworks that have tormented many sleepless New Yorkers for weeks, and which kicked into high gear for the 4th, as this timelapse video shows:
Complaints about illegal fireworks have, well, skyrocketed in recent weeks, culminating in a crackdown by the NYPD as officials attempt to stop the flow of illegal fireworks from nearby states like Pennsylvania. It remains to be seen whether the city will continue to see illegal fireworks exploding late into the night now that the holiday is over, but many weary New Yorkers are no doubt hoping that all the fireworks were used up last night and there are simply no more fireworks left to be lit.
