I spent New Year's Eve in Tijuas, at a house party with the family of a friend of a friend of my sister's. The house was on a steep hill overlooking the old route to Rosarito. Tijuana is very hilly. Like San Francisco-hilly. Many houses have spectacular views of the city and the hillsides, which is great for watching holiday fireworks that echo up from the canyons and make the city sound like it's a warzone. Rich or poor, everyone shoots fireworks here on the holidays. All kinds. From big special-effects fireworks to deafening little cherry bombs that people basically launch at one another for kicks. At the house party, we spent most of the night playing with fireworks out on the street like giddy kids. You light one, watch it scream into the sky, explode, kick on a few car alarms, and then everything is amazing. You want to light more. A little after midnight, one adult made the mistake of lighting a large old firework while standing over it. It popped into a cloud of smoke right in his face, and he stumbled away, shocked, asking if his eye had been burned apart. Everyone quickly decided he was fine. We kept launching fireworks, without a single pause in the laughter.
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