apollak

Bryant ParkOf the seventeen or so employees of our company, we had one person in a cow costume, one wearing devil horns all day, and one with a candy corn sweater. Not exactly what I would call tremendous Halloween spirit. And on the streets of midtown I saw no costumes, no silly hats, not even a cape below a coat. After work I took the long way around the Library to see if any of the skaters were skating in costume at the new Bryant Park skating rink. Nada. Plenty of skaters but no costumes. Not a hint of spooky festivity. It was already Christmas there.
Castro on the 7I went down into the subway and noticed the woman sitting across from me suddenly start smirking and realized only then that down the empty row of seats from her sat a guy in full fatigues and a big rubber Castro mask. The spirit lived!

When I got off the train the spirits were in fact, out in force. I saw three little Batmen, Four little girls in devil outfits, a couple of little witches and an unhappy little Spider-man. The kids went from shop to shop on 30th Avenue trick-or-treating. Yes, shop to shop. This seemed wrong on several levels. These are places of business - having the threats of tricks imposed on them seems out of whack. Kids in masks showing up demanding candy from a convenience store smack of petty larceny if you ask me. My humble opinion. I get that there are not a whol elot of private houses in our neighborhood of Astoria but still there have got to be better alternatives. I grew up in an apartment building until I was 7 years old and I remember going from door to door in the building and kids in the building having parties. My Spider-man costume had a real web shooter with a rubber-suction-cup dart at the end that was more than enough of a threat to our neighbors to get a yummy bag of candy without feeling like I was knocking over a 7Eleven.