Last week I wrote a lil’ ditty about Halloween decorations and being happy to be alive. Then I went down to New Orleans to celebrate a good friend’s birthday. New Orleans is a great walking town in general, but on Halloween it was magnificent. I marveled at all the costumes and revelry. But now the festivities are behind us, and I want to hear from you. How was your Halloween weekend walk? Did you take a young one trick or treating? Or go out to a parade? Or maybe you simply walked around your neighborhood and took in all the costumes. No matter what you did, tell me about your Halloween weekend walk. 🎃
I wasn’t really feeling Halloween this year. My older daughter is away - her first year in college - and the younger, a senior in high school, was at a friend’s all weekend. I live a couple blocks from the amazing, old Green-Wood Cemetery and walked the hills there for hours. I was mourning the loss of trick or treating, my kids’ childhoods, the costumes and decorations. The cemetery’s huge fall-leaved trees, the Victorian crypts, the hills of orange dry pine needles and occasional pumpkins on headstones — all were quiet solace. I visited an old neighbor’s urn site and sat awhile in the Garden of Tranquility surrounded by ancestors and marble memorials. It felt ok to be sad there, and I left feeling a little lighter and clearer.
I didn’t dress up, but got in the Halloween spirit by taking in all the stray cats in Nola ruling their respective blocks. Lots of ginger cats in particular!
We moved 3 weeks before Halloween, which is a rough time to take a kid away from everything they know. We walked around a new-to-us neighborhood with some old friends and a pack of kids my kid didn't quite feel like joining. It was bittersweet, but we got a haul of sugar, and we talked about how next year maybe it will all feel better.
I went to a dog costume parade, ate an incredible breakfast sandwich, and watched dogs dressed like tacos and spaceships wrestle with each other. It was exactly what I needed.
I live in Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam. It's achingly charming–the old town center, built around a massive cathedral, is almost entirely closed off from cars, so it's just bikes and pedestrians and café terraces and cobblestone streets. On Saturday, there's a market (of course there is) in the main square. It was gray and chilly and lashing rain, which is pretty standard stuff up here, so people are basically undeterred. In fact, they kind of own it. Perhaps you've heard the word gezellig–one of those untranslatable words like hygge, or saudade that describe a whole mood. The Dutch do a swift trade in candles at this time of year; everything is aglow in soft, sulfurous light, and you kind of think, hey, this isn't so bad, all this damp darkness, just throw me another sheepskin blanket! So that was my Halloween weekend walk-soaked, and soaking it all up in the Grote Markt. The Dutch have a saying for the rain-averse: "You're not made of sugar!" And indeed, no one melted.
I had to work Halloween night but got to see some great costumes on the subway. NYC is still undefeated when it comes to Halloween but now I’m interested in seeing how New Orleans does it.
I'm beginning to feel like an old grump. We moved into our city neighborhood in the mid-eighties, and loved the Halloween and trick-or-treating revelry that happened every year. We would routinely have 200-300 children ring our doorbell; it was fun. Our neighborhood has gentrified over the past decade, and this year the neighborhood association hosted a "safe" Halloween party in a park. We had maybe a couple dozen children come to the door? I'm not sure what "safe" was meant to be...safe from covid? Safe from strangers? By all accounts the turnout for the party was huge and everyone had a great time, so who am I to complain? But I missed the street revelry, and can't help but wonder about what our urban neighborhood is losing when families are afraid their own quiet streets.
Halloween in our neighborhood is a big deal, especially after being a skip last year. Our houses are so close together that we can gather outside in a circle with our candy bowls, while drinking wine and chatting. But daughter, a pre-teen, didn't want either of her parents walking with her this year; she joined another family because any parent is less embarrassing than one's own parents. I had logged 5.5 miles that morning, so I was happy to be on candy bowl duty and thrilled that I bought the right amount (about 400 pieces). I dressed up as Agent 99 from Get Smart, a cultural reference that absolutely no one understood, while daughter was Wednesday Addams.
My neighborhood got an influx of new young families with incredibly sassy kids (which is fabulous). We manned the front door to meet all the new kiddos and ply them with enough sugar to power a small village. We had more trick or treaters than in the previous five years combined!
I was in Las Vegas for the Phish run. The daytime hours didn’t feel too much like Halloween - Vegas is kind of like a vortex separate from the real world (at least that’s how I experienced it). The real festivities took place at night leading up to, during, and after the show. The band plays a three set show on Halloween and they dressed up as “sci-fi soldiers” who essentially transported from the year 4680 and took over the bodies of the band members for a glorious 100 minutes or so. Post-show walking included a tram ride to an after show we were too late for and wandering the strip south and around the casino before finally going to bed. All the non-fans in this thread probably think I sound ridiculous but it was my favorite and most memorable Halloween celebration to date.
Have you heard about St. James Joy in Clinton Hill? It started as a DJ playing music during lockdown and grew into a full-blown street party. On Halloween it was the most fun, effervescent, joyful night with people from all over the neighborhood dancing, laughing, drinking, and generally getting their groove on. What a blast!
I wandered around Brooklyn...first stop was sipping a delicious ginger latte at a charming coffee shop in Williamsburg called Land to Sea. Lots of little kids and dogs dressed up walking around the neighborhood. Shop owners stood outside with little buckets of treats to hand out. It was so adorable. Then, I walked to Yoseka Stationery in Greenpoint to pick up a few pens and bottles of ink for my fountain pens and dip pens. Lots more kids dressed up in Greenpoint, riled up on sugar! I got a soba cha latte at Kettl and sat in the park nearby to catch up on some podcasts and to wait until Taqueria Ramirez opened at 5 pm. I got in line at 4:30 pm and my plate arrived about an hour later, and wowwww.....the tacos were absolutely worth it! The street it is on (Oak Street) went full-out with the decorations, so I wandered along the street, admiring the decorations, and dodging the kids as they ran around. Halloween isn't my favorite but this year was absolutely charming :)
I was moving this weekend so I was running errands around my old apartment in the LES and saw so many adorable kids skipping in and out of dive bars and smoke shops trick-or-treating. It made me miss the neighborhood already.
I wasn’t really feeling Halloween this year. My older daughter is away - her first year in college - and the younger, a senior in high school, was at a friend’s all weekend. I live a couple blocks from the amazing, old Green-Wood Cemetery and walked the hills there for hours. I was mourning the loss of trick or treating, my kids’ childhoods, the costumes and decorations. The cemetery’s huge fall-leaved trees, the Victorian crypts, the hills of orange dry pine needles and occasional pumpkins on headstones — all were quiet solace. I visited an old neighbor’s urn site and sat awhile in the Garden of Tranquility surrounded by ancestors and marble memorials. It felt ok to be sad there, and I left feeling a little lighter and clearer.
I didn’t dress up, but got in the Halloween spirit by taking in all the stray cats in Nola ruling their respective blocks. Lots of ginger cats in particular!
We moved 3 weeks before Halloween, which is a rough time to take a kid away from everything they know. We walked around a new-to-us neighborhood with some old friends and a pack of kids my kid didn't quite feel like joining. It was bittersweet, but we got a haul of sugar, and we talked about how next year maybe it will all feel better.
I went to a dog costume parade, ate an incredible breakfast sandwich, and watched dogs dressed like tacos and spaceships wrestle with each other. It was exactly what I needed.
I live in Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam. It's achingly charming–the old town center, built around a massive cathedral, is almost entirely closed off from cars, so it's just bikes and pedestrians and café terraces and cobblestone streets. On Saturday, there's a market (of course there is) in the main square. It was gray and chilly and lashing rain, which is pretty standard stuff up here, so people are basically undeterred. In fact, they kind of own it. Perhaps you've heard the word gezellig–one of those untranslatable words like hygge, or saudade that describe a whole mood. The Dutch do a swift trade in candles at this time of year; everything is aglow in soft, sulfurous light, and you kind of think, hey, this isn't so bad, all this damp darkness, just throw me another sheepskin blanket! So that was my Halloween weekend walk-soaked, and soaking it all up in the Grote Markt. The Dutch have a saying for the rain-averse: "You're not made of sugar!" And indeed, no one melted.
I had to work Halloween night but got to see some great costumes on the subway. NYC is still undefeated when it comes to Halloween but now I’m interested in seeing how New Orleans does it.
I'm beginning to feel like an old grump. We moved into our city neighborhood in the mid-eighties, and loved the Halloween and trick-or-treating revelry that happened every year. We would routinely have 200-300 children ring our doorbell; it was fun. Our neighborhood has gentrified over the past decade, and this year the neighborhood association hosted a "safe" Halloween party in a park. We had maybe a couple dozen children come to the door? I'm not sure what "safe" was meant to be...safe from covid? Safe from strangers? By all accounts the turnout for the party was huge and everyone had a great time, so who am I to complain? But I missed the street revelry, and can't help but wonder about what our urban neighborhood is losing when families are afraid their own quiet streets.
Halloween in our neighborhood is a big deal, especially after being a skip last year. Our houses are so close together that we can gather outside in a circle with our candy bowls, while drinking wine and chatting. But daughter, a pre-teen, didn't want either of her parents walking with her this year; she joined another family because any parent is less embarrassing than one's own parents. I had logged 5.5 miles that morning, so I was happy to be on candy bowl duty and thrilled that I bought the right amount (about 400 pieces). I dressed up as Agent 99 from Get Smart, a cultural reference that absolutely no one understood, while daughter was Wednesday Addams.
My neighborhood got an influx of new young families with incredibly sassy kids (which is fabulous). We manned the front door to meet all the new kiddos and ply them with enough sugar to power a small village. We had more trick or treaters than in the previous five years combined!
I was in Las Vegas for the Phish run. The daytime hours didn’t feel too much like Halloween - Vegas is kind of like a vortex separate from the real world (at least that’s how I experienced it). The real festivities took place at night leading up to, during, and after the show. The band plays a three set show on Halloween and they dressed up as “sci-fi soldiers” who essentially transported from the year 4680 and took over the bodies of the band members for a glorious 100 minutes or so. Post-show walking included a tram ride to an after show we were too late for and wandering the strip south and around the casino before finally going to bed. All the non-fans in this thread probably think I sound ridiculous but it was my favorite and most memorable Halloween celebration to date.
Have you heard about St. James Joy in Clinton Hill? It started as a DJ playing music during lockdown and grew into a full-blown street party. On Halloween it was the most fun, effervescent, joyful night with people from all over the neighborhood dancing, laughing, drinking, and generally getting their groove on. What a blast!
I wandered around Brooklyn...first stop was sipping a delicious ginger latte at a charming coffee shop in Williamsburg called Land to Sea. Lots of little kids and dogs dressed up walking around the neighborhood. Shop owners stood outside with little buckets of treats to hand out. It was so adorable. Then, I walked to Yoseka Stationery in Greenpoint to pick up a few pens and bottles of ink for my fountain pens and dip pens. Lots more kids dressed up in Greenpoint, riled up on sugar! I got a soba cha latte at Kettl and sat in the park nearby to catch up on some podcasts and to wait until Taqueria Ramirez opened at 5 pm. I got in line at 4:30 pm and my plate arrived about an hour later, and wowwww.....the tacos were absolutely worth it! The street it is on (Oak Street) went full-out with the decorations, so I wandered along the street, admiring the decorations, and dodging the kids as they ran around. Halloween isn't my favorite but this year was absolutely charming :)
We went for a walk on our neighborhood "slow street" and saw our local state senator, Scott Wiener, dressed as a hot dog. https://twitter.com/Scott_Wiener/status/1454938534830215176
I was moving this weekend so I was running errands around my old apartment in the LES and saw so many adorable kids skipping in and out of dive bars and smoke shops trick-or-treating. It made me miss the neighborhood already.