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Ya know those boxes of your favorite childhood hand-held firework, sparklers, you just picked up for tonight's festivities? Yeah, they're illegal. Last September the City Council passed an amendment adding sparklers to the list of banned fireworks. If this is the first you've heard about it, you're not alone. Despite the ban, sparklers are still easy to obtain and sold at stores around the area (Izzy Rizzy's Trick Shop and a few local K-Mart stores to name a few), as many store managers are not even aware the amendment was passed.
"Kmart's fireworks vendor was not aware that the city of Chicago had specifically banned the sale of sparklers," said Kimberly Freely, spokeswoman for Sears Holdings.
When informed of the ban, stores immediately pulled the dangerous wands of fire off their shelves, keeping Chicago spark-free this Fourth. OK, we get that sparklers can be dangerous for children and drunk or clumsy people but sometimes responsible adults sitting safely in a chair want to play with them too. So here's how to make them at home. Happy strontium nitrate hunting. [S-T]
Photo by: Tom Olliver
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Am I alone in thinking this is ridiculous?
I dunno. When I was a kid I bought some one day while my parents weren't home and had fun using them in the living room. That is, until the super hot wires dropped on the carpet and just about set the place on fire.
Granted, I love fire. A lot. Maybe I'm the only one. I know i can say that it would have saved our lovely shag carpeting.
The recipe for sparklers should have been posted before, to give a person time to prepare!!
Didn't know you could do 'home made' sparklers, if I were to do that I would make them really, really big.
I loved them as a kid and STILL love them but they're so small and they always flicker out so disappointingly fast.
Maybe next year I will defy the law and mix up a batch.
You know, there's a device that creates INTENSE heat. You can get it for FREE at many restaurants and bars. Each package contains dozens of these tiny, dangerous devices. The heat they produce can burn flesh, ignite materials and is easily obtained and used by children!
They're called matches.
Look for the City council to ban those shortly.
Oh, and Michelle Mahoney is a terrible mother. Allow me to explain.
If you kid gets hurt that's a damn shame. I broke my collar bone as a kid falling out of a tree. My mother did not call for tree-climbing to be banned, nor did she make it her "mission" to stop kids from undertaking this potentially dangerous activity.
She told me to be more careful, and spending 6 weeks in a brace reinforced the lesson.
Mahoney isn't "protecting" kids. She's coddling them.
She's teaching her daughter that if something bad happens to you the world must change. If you wonder why kids today seem more self-absorbed, whiney and weak, blame parents like Mahoney.
Instead of taking your lumps, learning a lesson and being stronger for it, you sue and whine and preach and ban.
It does a disservice when real issues arise and you can't discern the actual problems from the petty complaints.
It's not often I agree with you, AlbanyParker, but you are 100% right. We are raising a generation of entitled wimps.
Yeah, I know, every older generation says the kids suck, but still ...
the City Council also banned ... snaps, punks and any fun of any sort.
Dammit, my annual birthday Volcano dessert at Rainforest Cafe just got a little less special.
And it seems like only a couple of days ago people were saying how absurd it was that some call Chicago a nanny state.
I thought Chicagoist knew sparklers were banned?
what about snakes??? Did they ban snakes too?!?!?
This coddling of kids and being overprotective is why so many young adults now days cant solve the simplest of problems or do anything for themselves.
stephen, it used to be a priority to link back to previous posts, but for some reason chicagoist doesn't do that as much anymore ...