A Black-Market Fireworks Dealer Explains This Year’s Boom

He’s skeptical about the conspiracy theories; his customers are post-lockdown revellers, looking to blow off steam.

by Anna Boots @ NewYorker.com, June 29

Last week, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a thin man in a white T-shirt and a wide-brimmed Chicago Bulls cap proudly popped the trunk of his Chevy Malibu. Inside, there were Golden Willows, Chain Reactions, Parachute Battal­ions, and Mini Artillery Shells—dozens of colorful boxes, one of them labelled “For Daytime Use!” This was what remained of the twelve hundred dollars’ worth of fireworks that the man, who asked not to be named, had purchased during a visit to Keystone Fireworks, in Pennsylvania, and then sold, for more than double the price, around Brooklyn. (Fireworks are illegal in New York State.) He takes calls for deliveries from ­regular customers, or parks on a busy street and does business, out of his car, with ­whoever stops by. “People have always done fireworks,” he said, “but they’re going harder than ever this year. They can’t wait to come ­outside.”

A few blocks over, a group of young men, probably in their twenties, launched a several-minutes-long blitz. They took turns darting from the sidewalk into the street to light streams of Roman candles, which they topped off with five-hundred-­gram “cakes”: the largest firework that can be legally used without a ­federal explosives permit. People watched from their apartment buildings. One neighbor leaned out his window and begged the group to stop; the fireworks were scaring his dog. “Fuck your dog!” one of the men yelled back at him. “We will shoot these shits at your house!” Moments later, a cop car rolled up, and the group retreated.

For the past two weeks in Brooklyn, the sight—and deafening sound—of fireworks exploding has become as much a fact of daily life as the Black Lives Matter protests and the 7 p.m. cheer for essential workers. Big fireworks sellers such as Keystone are seeing increased demand; Kevin Shaub, the chain’s co-owner, said that when his stores, which had been closed since mid-March, finally reopened, a few weeks ago, customers came flooding in. “People haven’t had any enter­tainment for a long time,” Shaub said. “They’ve had to delay weddings, graduations, and birthdays.” A lot of these fireworks have ended up in New York City. People bought troves from street venders in early June, and then, instead of saving them for the Fourth of July—as they normally would—set them all off on weekends, or on Juneteenth, or on a random Tuesday. And then they came back to buy more. “The money’s good,” the man in the Bulls cap said. This year, he sold in two days what would have normally taken him two weeks.

His fireworks aren’t cheap; the ­fanciest ones in his trunk go for two hundred bucks. So most of his customers are adults—“people with money,” he said—rather than teen-agers. Nearly all of them are men. They tend to be in their late twen­ties or thirties, and sometimes, if they’re buying fireworks before the sun has set, they bring their kids with them. That night, the man gestured around at the neighborhood, which was coming off a four-month lockdown. “They’re celebrating,” he said of the people setting off the fireworks. “It’s definitely about freedom.”

There have been several injuries: a man was hospitalized after lighting a firework that shot out the wrong end, and last week, a three-year-old was burned by one that came through his bedroom window. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a “huge sting operation to go and get these illegal fireworks at the base.” In response to recent calls about illegal fireworks in Flatbush, dozens of N.Y.P.D. officers showed up in riot gear.But, hours after the Mayor’s announcement, the man was back in Crown Heights, selling his supply [....]

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