I was sitting with a friend on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade overlooking the East River on the evening of Saturday, September 14, 2024. On or about 9:40 PM, we started hearing loud explosions. There were fireworks over the river near the Old Fulton entrance/exit of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Red fireworks exploding over Brooklyn Bridge Park with the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

Why were there fireworks? I assume it was some was a party or donor event being held in Brooklyn Bridge Park, but I am not entirely sure.

Two large white fireworks streaming down over Brooklyn Bridge Park with the Brooklyn Heights Promenade fence in the foreground and the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

The fireworks show was relatively short, but impressive. I took my first photo near the start at 9:41 and my last video of what turned out to be the grand finale at 9:46.

Streaming white fireworks with three small white fireworks in their center over Brooklyn Bridge Park with the Brooklyn Heights Promenade fence in the foreground and the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

However, short as the display was – these were high quality fireworks. Not the sort of junk one would come across in a local neighborhood show. Note that in all of my photos, you can see the Freedom Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge through the fireworks in the skyline, making this post a nice complement to my article on seeing the Freedom Tower through the fog from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Large streaming white fireworks begin to fade with three new smaller white fireworks in their center going off. Brooklyn Heights Promenade fence is in the foreground while the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge are in the distant background.

After the last fireworks were fired, I saw what I thought were the responsible boats sailing back in the direction of Staten Island. There was one last firework after the finale – perhaps for good measure.

Large white fireworks going off over Brooklyn Bridge Park with the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

I made two 21 second videos of the show, which you can see here and here. For The New Leaf Journal, I decided to makes GIFs out of the videos instead of embedding the full content.

I turned the two videos into GIFs using a similar process to what I employed in turning a short video I took of a pill bug into a GIF back in May. However, I came away with some concerns that the second GIF may cause an Electric Soldier Porygon incident, so I decided to err on the safe side and avoid causing my readers to have seizures. You can enjoy the less flashy gif below.

4X speed GIF of 21 second segment of fireworks show over Brooklyn Bridge Park. It features white, purple, green, and red fireworks. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade fence sits in the foreground while the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge can be seen in the background.

I took a 21 second video of the fireworks and fast forwarded it 4X using gifski, so the gif looks more dramatic than the video. The reason I fast forwarded was to make the GIF smaller (in terms of file size) while still including the full clip. I used gifsicle to optimize the GIF (just as I did with the pill bug back in May), but I did not use the 256 color restriction I employed for the pill bug GIF because it did not play nicely with the final output. I found that gifsicle did a slightly (very slightly) better job shrinking the gif than did gifski.

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