Ah, the Fourth of July. It falls somewhere around twelve on my list of favorite holidays, this year squeaking past President’s Day  because it marks the third anniversary of my last speeding ticket and subsequently lower insurance rates. Sure, I’m lucky to be an American, I just question whether the appropriate way to celebrate the birth of a revolutionarily self-directed system of government is by  gettin’ drunk and blowin’ up stuff (not to mention, setting up speed traps, but that’s another tangent).

Last year, living as we do in a prime viewing location for the Seattle Lake Union fireworks display, we were treated to an apartment full of barbeque smoke and intermittent shouting of “91 Rules!”, courtesy of any one of the number of frat parties thrown in our apartment complex (Of course said frat boys would have to have been eight years past their ‘91 graduation, but again, another tangent, another time...) It seems every loser with so much as a studio apartment on Eastlake seems compelled to throw giant parties and invite seventy of their closest friends. In addition to the shouting and cursing the dreadful Englishmen, there were the ubiquitous illegal fireworks shot at the hundreds of tightly packed cars crammed into all available alleyways and one-way streets.

This year, our neighbors have gotten ever younger and more obnoxious, often entertaining us well past three in the morning with the music of their laughter, or just their music. It seemed the only logical escape was to, well, escape, and we accepted an invitation to celebrate the fourth with a lovely salmon barbeque on Bainbridge Island. We took precautions. We tightly closed all of our windows. We parked the second car so as to take up both of our allotted spaces. We left Seattle at two and prayed it would still be there when we got back.

At eleven pm, about a half-hour after the grand finale at Lake Union, we disembark from the ferry and make our way back to the apartment. Ten minutes later we are at our freeway exit, three blocks from home. You may think this is where our evening ends, but  it’s just the beginning. You see, something happens when you invite the entire population of the city with the fifth worst traffic in the country to assemble in a small neighborhood with no parking in the middle of the night. And then put the nation’s most famously inefficient police force in charge of dis-assembling them. For those of you who are not frequent visitors, our streets are theoretically two-way, but only one-way in practice with parked cars lining both sides. Our enlightened police force chose to disable all of the traffic lights and direct everyone out of the neighborhood.

Of course, figuring out how to provide residents access back into the area was too difficult a mental task for Seattle’s finest. Describing how we had to detour in order to get home will lose its effect if you aren’t familiar with our neighborhood, but you will be able to feel our pain when I tell you that it took two hours to get from the freeway to our driveway, a distance of three blocks. It would’ve been quicker to get out of the car and wait for it to get towed. The amazing thing was that at 1:30 am, when we parked the car, the streets were still crammed and impassable, full stony-faced drivers and their miserable passengers, all the glee gained from throwing M-80s at cars and chugging can after can of Bud forgotten after their three-hour, three block journey, with miles left to go.

Next year, if we still live here, we’ll stay home and brave the lousy neighbors. I’d invite you, but I don’t know how on earth you’d be able to get home.