I mean, Long Beach, with its nightly cacophony of exploding M-80's M-100's, Bottle Rockets, Sky Rockets, Missiles, ad nauseam, is working its way to becoming the Pyrotechnical Capital of Southern California.

Frank Sinatra pegged in an endearing manner in his trademark "New York, New York" rendition that the great metropolis was the City That Never Sleeps.

Mr. Sinatra didn't live long enough to visit Long Beach the past few weeks because a lot of people, not to mention dogs and cats, in our city are missing a lot of sleep because a lot of people are setting off an awful lot of fireworks.

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And, of course, as we all know, fireworks are illegal in Long Beach, but so was looting until the tragic evening of May 31, 2020 when 214 downtown businesses were savagely violated as the city cops, for the most part, stood down as the terrible proceedings unfolded without their intervention.

Long Beach Report has video screen saves showing a Long Beach police car cruising past culprits setting off various fireworks, even though they're clearly breaking the law.

Does tyranny now reign supreme in Long Beach?

I realize the Long Beach Police Department is understaffed -- it now has roughly 200 fewer cops on its force than it did a few years ago -- but is it so understaffed that it can allow this city to sound like a World War I battle field (the Somme, Passchendale, Verdun, Ypres), when each opposing side pummeled each other with millions of ear-deafening artillery shells oftentimes 24 hours a day?

At least Long Beach hasn't become that apocalyptic -- thousands of World War I soldiers wound up totally deaf from the noise -- although a lifetime observer of the Long Beach scene, Big Mike O'Toole, says he never recalls a louder July 4th than the past one.

"We've had some great fireworks shows across the years -- Queen Mary, Veterans Stadium, the Big Bang at Alamitos Bay, but never one with the sustained loudness of this one," says Mr. O'Toole, a prominent local businessman and president-for-life of the Naples Improvement Association.. "And what made this one so unique is that it went on for at least four and a half hours without a break. And, man was it loud! No doubt about that."

Mr. O'Toole, who has become a recent social media sensation with his Otolini Cuisini culinary delights seen on You Tube, offers a theory for these rumbling evening detonations now disturbing Long Beach.

"Fireworks have long been illegal in Long Beach -- and yet we've always had a lot of fireworks go off here on the fourth of July," says the 1977 Wilson High graduate.. "But this time it was more prolific for an obvious reason. I think it has been a natural reaction to all the restrictions being imposed on people in recent months by the Pandemic. It's illegal to go the beach. It's illegal to go to bars. It's illegal to go into most stores without wearing a mask. It's illegal to do this, it's illegal to do that. Sure, fireworks are illegal, too. But that's the one thing people can do---as they have in the past---and get away with it. And they did it with a vengeance this time. How can the cops stop it? You can't stick a cop in every neighborhood in Long Beach. Not feasible. Will the nightly fireworks continue? I have no idea."

If they do, Long Beach also will become known as the City That Never Sleeps.

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