How To Find Fireworks In Naples

So the Triple Crown horse race was last Saturday night. For us it didn’t start until midnight. We threw a party full of steaks, crab legs, and drinks and invited a bunch of Justin’s work people over. One of our guests, Evans, decided he wanted to get some fireworks. So him and another guy took off in their car to find them. For those of you who don’t know Naples, particularly our neighborhood of Gricignano, is obsessed with fireworks and will shoot them off for any reason at all at any time of the day or night. So anyways, off they go. They stop at the gas station and mime fireworks whizzing and exploding (they don’t speak any Italian). The gas station guy tells them “piazza piazza piazza” a few blocks from our house. They arrive at the piazza, where Italian men always seem to sit and chat all day and never do any work. They asked a random guy there, rather they mimed a booming firework again, and the Italian guy motioned for them to follow him in their car.

They go to a house a few more blocks away where there are security-looking guys standing on the balconies and guys at the front gate. They give our guys a look and deem them okay to come in. Two Italian guys lead them and two follow our two guys. They said it was super shady and thought they might get clocked on the head and robbed. Anyways, they led them down into the basement, making it seem even more shady. Then into a little room in the basement which was full of fireworks. Evans decided not to try to negotiate pricing with them. He paid E400 for the stack of fireworks you can see in the video. The Italian men warned him in particular of the home-made looking one…run after you light it. Evans came back and was pretty sure he had just dealt with the Camorra.

So we shot off the fireworks off and on during the day and night and ended up missing the horse race. We have no idea who won…but the main horse up for the Triple Crown “I’ll Have Another” got tendinitis and wasn’t racing, so we aren’t too concerned anyhow. Sorry Mom, the fireworks were not Black Cat =(.