Halloween

I just returned from the Village Halloween Parade, an annual parade that consists of people in costumes walking from the East Village to Greenwich Village. I’m usually skeptical about Halloween; it doesn’t have a real tradition at home, and I generally got the impression that it’s mainly about making money and giving grown-ups a chance to dress up without joining a carnival club. But I thought, hey, I’m in the US, and it’s supposed to be authentic here, so let’s give it a try.

And I’m glad I did! There were some really impressive huge ghosts and icky pumpkins with vine tentacles (hopefully Patrick will have some nice pictures soon), and some utterly weird parade cars (such as the one with the KISS fans), and lots of people in more or less impressive costumes. They had every conceivable costume I could imagine; there were Catwomen and pirates and ninjas and stormtroopers and cockroaches and Homer Simpsons and zombies and guys with anti-Bush signs and enough doctors to have a spontaneous little German doctor strike demo. There was also a huge audience — we were lucky to see something –, and most of them were also in full dress.

The whole atmosphere was very relaxed and fun. But if you didn’t pay attention and got caught in a subway station with a bunch of serial killers and vampires, you could indeed imagine that this is the night when the boundary between us and the other world is particularly thin. So this is a Halloween tradition that makes sense and that I can subscribe to. Once more, yay for New York.