Since personal fireworks are illegal in CA, the Fourth of July is a great holiday to check out the events that some of the smaller neighborhoods in LA put on. There’s an all-day festival at Grand Park in downtown, another in Long Beach and the Hollywood Bowl, just to name a few. How we got to the Studio City celebration, you’d have to ask @TheDailyBHuzz but we had a pretty interesting day in-store…

We got to CBS Studios at about 5p (four hours before firework showtime). This only worked in our favor for parking but the downside, we had 4 long hours to do activities that we could’ve done in 25mins. It’s cool though, we just walked really slow…

There were picture booths with mermaids and pirates (who really actually smelled like pirates), snack stands with frozen lemonade and popcorn, a kiddie area with bounce houses, the main stage where we saw the Doo Wop Boys. Let’s pause for a minute on these Doo Wop boys. Fun group of dudes, great voices but talk about a blast from the past! They sang the oldest songs known to man! Lol!

Also on the lot was a famous car exhibition with recognizable cars from movies (which was pretty cool), a toy plane exhibit (which they probably could’ve not included) SNOOZE… A BBQ stand that was so busy that they messed up our order and gave us the driest hamburger instead of the pulled bork BBQ sandwich we’d ordered. No bueno…

Oh! A magic show that we could NOT find and after at least 30m of searching, we got there right as they had reached capacity. So can’t comment on this one but the magic council outside the magic show was pretty impressive with their card tricks.

The best part, as it should be, was the actual firework show. They had a sick playlist with a great mix of music (from this decade) as well as some classic american pride songs! Traffic was a beast getting out but I’m sure people had that problem nationwide!

Pros: Firework show playlist; Kettle Corn; money raised all went to charity (only reason the $40 I paid for access didn’t make the “cons” list).

Cons: Entertainment needed to be brought into this millennium; better maps so we can find the activities promoted; more food options

CBS Studios, Studio City – July 4, 2013