John Morris had just finished a round-trip 16-hour car ride to attend a regulatory meeting in Northern California, where he scored an unlikely win for one of the city’s most popular events, Big Bang on the Bay.
But there was little time to celebrate. He was weeks behind in securing donations from Naples and Peninsula homeowners, whose donations help pay for the annual fireworks show on July 3 that has become a local tradition celebrated by more than 100,000 people.
Fireworks will happen this year.
But the Coastal Commission, which has wide power to regulate events over the water, says it won’t allow them again.
“It’s crazy,” said Morris, sifting through 300 names and numbers on his donor list while sitting on the patio of his restaurant, Boathouse on the Bay. “Thousands of people come out, charities raise money, we celebrate the country. Why are they against us?”
Coastal Commission staff, for their part, said they are not against the Fourth of July or fireworks. In a lengthy interview, Steve Hudson, director of the South Coast district of the Commission, said every event is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The Commission “has allowed other shows in other areas where those can occur and also protect natural resources,” he said. “In [the Alamitos Bay] case, the Commission found that is not possible.”
Morris and his supporters beg to differ. The restaurateur and legendary fundraiser has been feuding with environmentalists, the state Commission and local bird activists for at least two years over the fireworks, which are launched from a single barge in the middle of the Bay.
He beat a lawsuit brought by a state environmental group in 2023 that claimed the event violated the Clean Water Act after a lone firework ignited too close to the water the previous year. Morris prevailed, but spent an estimated $200,000 on legal costs.
That same year, the Coastal Commission declined to extend an exemption from permitting that the event had enjoyed since its inception in 2011.
Hudson, of the Coastal Commission, said the decision to end that exemption was due to complaints lodged by local bird advocates and the fact that the ticketed portion of the party blocks off a small stretch of public access to the water. Morris, they deemed, would need a Local Coastal Permit, a process that takes months and gives the Commission wide power to impose restrictions and requirements on details big and small.
That vast authority has been the source of heated criticism lately, including one former commissioner-turned-critic, Arnold Steinberg, who said the Commission is nothing more than “a staff-controlled extortion racket.”
Recent calls to reform or even dismantle the Commission have come from all corners: President Donald Trump, but also California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-controlled state Legislature.
The Commission in January openly discussed its reputational problems and published a report for the first time this year outlining how many permits it had approved. Hudson said the Commission is trying to do a better job of explaining its role and mandate under the Coastal Act.
The Commission was established in a 1972 landmark vote of the people to rein in development along the state’s 840 miles of coastline and protect the public’s right to enjoy it. The 1976 Coastal Act gave the Commission unprecedented power as a quasi-judicial body.
Long Beach has a sanctioned “Local Coastal Plan” that generally allows it to make decisions on its own coastal land. And the Queen Mary’s Independence Day fireworks show, which is planned without the Commission’s sign-off, is located over water that is governed by the Port of Long Beach.
The statewide Commission, however, has jurisdiction over Alamitos Bay a few miles east, including the canals that snake around Naples Island and the nearly landlocked bay. And that is where the interests of locals who love this event have collided with a distant and highly bureaucratic state body that Morris alleges is pushing its own pet interests — drones, for example — on the city.
The chair of the Coastal Commission, Justin Cummings, is open about the fact that he’s a drone enthusiast and technician. He spearheaded a new center for drone education and research in Santa Cruz, where he lives.
In a staff report, the Commission detailed at length the benefits of drones and dismissed the conclusions of an environmental analysis by Morris’ group that said drones pose an equal or greater threat to the environment than fireworks.
Drone shows involve hundreds of individual aerial devices that are programmed to form patterns in the sky, like an American flag. Laguna Beach tried it last year, but will switch back to fireworks this year after residents there described it as “corny” and “anticlimactic.” It also cost about $30,000 more than fireworks.
The biggest issue with drones in Alamitos Bay is that the devices require a large area for staging and the city does not allow them to be flown over people for safety reasons, said Brian Fisk, a Long Beach Fire Department spokesman who oversees events. Fisk said the department would have to shut down and secure a swath of the Peninsula, blocking access to the coast during one of the busiest weeks of the year.
What’s more, the drones would only be able to fly a few hundred feet in the air due to the location’s proximity to Long Beach Airport and FAA rules on unmanned aircraft. That, combined with the fact that drone lights face only one direction, means far fewer people would see the show.
Big Bang has grown so popular in large part because the fireworks are in direct view of thousands of homes in Naples, the Peninsula, Belmont Shore and further west and north.
Many homeowners host parties and chip in thousands for the fireworks and donations to the title nonprofit, this year the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach. In all, Morris says, over $2 million has been raised for charities. An estimated 100,000 people come each year to see the show in Long Beach alone, including about 1,300 who attend a ticketed block party in front of Morris’ restaurant at the southern tip of the city.
The block party is catered by Naples Rib Company, and Morris gives tables at cost to many other charities who keep the profits as donations for causes big and small.
Morris doubts a drone event would have the same appeal. At the Commission hearing last month, Morris, weary from a 400-mile drive and wearing bermuda shorts, told the commissioners as much: “What can I say?” he said. “I’m a fireworks guy.”
His passion for fireworks stems from his upbringing and arrival as an immigrant to the United States. Born outside Liverpool, England, Morris is the eldest of six children and had to hustle to provide for his family at a young age, according to a biography for the Post written by Josh Lowenthal (then a business partner, now the city’s Assemblyman).
Morris said his dad was “a drunk on the dole who would spend all the money he had betting on horses. So I had to step up early to help my mum.”
He came to the United States at 15 and landed in Pennsylvania. In his 20s, he took a road trip to the West Coast, saw a sign for the Queen Mary — the retired British ocean liner that is now a hotel and city attraction — and never left.
“I never knew what opportunity was until I moved to the States,” he said. “The streets here are paved with gold. I love this country.”
He organized the first fireworks show in 2011 on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with proceeds benefitting firefighters, then kept it going as an Independence Day celebration to benefit children-focused charities.
Standing at the public comment microphone in a boardroom in Half Moon Bay, Morris — a blunt businessman who has sparred with the city over the decades in his business ventures — choked up.
“I get emotional about this topic,” he told the Commission. “This event has just gone so unbelievably well.”
Morris’ case was emphatically supported by the city’s mostly liberal political machine, including the mayor and many city leaders. “This event has brought this community together,” Kristina Duggan, the Long Beach council representative for the coastal area, told the Commission in comments delivered over Zoom.
Until recently, the city had a voting member on the Coastal Commission, Councilman Roberto Uranga, who — appearing at his final meeting after 10 years on the Commission — was instrumental in whipping support in favor of the fireworks show. Speaking in a strained voice after suffering a stroke several years ago, Uranga told his colleagues that any damage caused by “20 minutes of fireworks” was worth the lifetime of benefits that kids receive as a result of donations from the event.
“That is not right,” Uranga said of efforts to cancel the show this year.
Any hope for fireworks next year, however, is a long shot at best. It may take regulatory changes in the Commission’s purview, because the permit that was approved in May does not allow for fireworks beginning in 2026.
Next year also happens to be the nation’s 250th birthday, and Morris wants to throw his biggest party yet.
Will it include fireworks? “I guess we’ll see,” he said.