NJ Barge Company Sets The Stage For Macy’s Fireworks Show
Workers aboard a Macy’s barge prepare July 2, 2014, for the Fourth of July fireworks show. (Credit: Tom Kaminski/WCBS 880)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Since 1976, the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show have been catching a ride with the same family-owned business.
As WCBS 880’s Jim Smith reported, Hughes Brothers, of Edison, New Jersey, has been in the barge business for 120 years and has supplying barges for the fireworks show for the past 38 years.
“It’s become a tradition,” said Joe Hughes, the company’s president. “I tell people, ‘No, it’s not a great money-maker for us.'”
But it has allowed him a unique view of the show for more than three decades.
“Once you’ve sat underneath the Macy’s fireworks show for over 30 years, anything else is like kissing your sister,” Hughes said.
When the fun is over and the smoke has cleared, the barges return to work at their day jobs — marine construction.
Broadcast live on 1010 WINS, the official radio station of Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show, the show promises more than 20 minutes and roughly 50,000 pounds of explosions.
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