Halloween Fun

Halloween 2009

I'm sure through the years lots of evil has appropriately been attributed to Halloween and its festivities, but in Park Slope only good things happen. Already, there is so much community in the neighborhood of Park Slope, but on Halloween night this community is experienced maybe like no other night of the year. There is a huge Family Halloween Parade, maybe like several hundred thousand people watching and walking, that goes right through the heart of the Slope. We have walked in it every year for the past 5 years. You should see some of the costumes, amazing, creative, beautiful, elaborate homemade creations mixed in with the old stand bys... the witches, the Disney princesses, the creeps. One of my favorites this year was the father who was the peddler from the book "Caps for Sale" and his sons who were the monkeys. They did a fabulous job of recreating the characters from this great children's book. One of our friends was musician Bloody Holiday (you can see pictures of him on my facebook page). We saw a family of Star Wars characters, numerous pirates, a little boy dressed as an excavator, another boy as a streetlight, some dad in the hugest, weirdest, googly-eyed mask we had ever seen, and cats, farmers, scarecrows, mermaids, etc. Ali creatively chose to be a fly this year, her best friend being a Venus fly trap. Not only did Ali have to escape death by fly trap but she also had to avoid becoming bait for her fly fisherman father. Tori and I chose some of the oldies but goodies, witch and 50's girl. Tori's best friend trick-or-treated with us as a dead pajama girl. Anyway, by 3 p.m. Ali was out with friends trick or treating and by 5 Tori, her friend and Brad and I were out. The parade began at 6:30 and ended an hour or so later at the park right by our house. As we walked in the parade we saw friends from Church!, friends from school, friends from our block, friends from the neighborhood; cheers, greetings, and screams of fright were exchanged. Fun and creepy times!