The city of San Francisco has decided the big Halloween party in the Castro is more trouble than it’s worth. I think it’s because too many people were showing up, and there were some problems in previous years like people getting stabbed.
Blew it off last year, doing the same this year. No decorations, no lights, no candy. We’ll watch TV in the bedroom.
I’m blowing it off, too. We live on a major highway so we don’t get many trick-or-treaters anyway. It’s just not worth setting everything up to only answer the door twice. I’ll be enjoying some time on the treadmill and then watching “Pushing Daisies” in the dark.
Not blowing it off, even though I haven’t really revved up for it.
I’m going to go home, and put up the few decorations I dragged out of their boxes, turn on the lights, and hand out the candy we bought about a week ago. I’m not particularly psyched about it. I’m pretty tired this week, and between work and grad school, I’ve got a mountain of tasks to take care of in the next few days.
Why bother? Maybe I’d feel differently if Halloween had generally sucked in the neighborhood I grew up in. But it rocked. Dozens of houses on every street opened their doors and made a cold mid-Autumn evening one of the best nights of the year.
They had no more reason to this for me than I have to do it for the mobs of children that are sure, as usual, to invade my neighborhood tonight. There was nothing init for them, there’s not much in it for me. I do it in gratitude to the mostly anonymous adults of my childhood who made Halloween special, if for no other reason than tradition. And some of the costumes will make me laugh.
The last several years I’ve carved a pumpkin, made spicy hot roasted pumpkin seeds, and accompanied my husband to his departmental Halloween party where I sit watching everyone else get tanked. This year is my break. Though I do miss munching on those seeds.
Boo Humbug.
If I have the energy I’m going over to my parents house in kimono. Otherwise, I’m staying home and ignoring the world.
Also, last year some gang members went on a shooting spree and 9 people were wounded. I guess that was the last straw. The Castro is a small area, the party simply outgrew the neighborhood. Can you imagine 200,000+ people in a 10 square block (or less) area?
Eric
I wanted to go to a haunted house (for the first time evar!!!), but then I realized I don’t get paid until tomorrow and I have like, $2. wah.
think I’ll just be going to the hopefully-empty gym, then possibly trolling the local videogame store for KotOR, and definitely watching my delightfully dimwitted Tila Tequila show. maybe I’ll eat some of my fudge-that-failed too.
Went home to celebrate my 40th and plenty of people were dressed up at the restaurants and bars. Sunday, we walked downtown to the annual Halloween parade (made bearable because my Dad filled a Starbucks cup w/wine!)
We carved a couple of pretty stellar Jack-o-Lanterns Thursday and I baked some BACON SALT pumpkin seeds. We got a bunch of candy, but, as we live in an apartment, we probably won’t get any treatsters…
I picked up Black Christmas and the original Night of the Living Dead. We’ll probably just have a couple of cocktails and try to get scared.
I always hide out at the bookstore until it’s all over. I’m a hermit by nature.
I wish I could just blow it off, but that is not an option in my house. It is the only ‘holiday’ that is celebrated at all, outside of birthdays, so my daughter goes bananas for it. Her and her dad are two big kids, and I have to costume them up, and have candy for the kids (only one kid came to my door).
I’m blowing it off for the second year in a row. I stayed late at school and got some work done, and now I’m hanging out in my controlled-access apartment building where the kids can’t bother me. I was thinking of taking a walk around the neighborhood just to take in the festivities, but it’s too damn cold. Seems like I’ve grown out of holidays.
Very few trick or treaters were on the street, so it’s a good thing I didn’t bother buying a bunch of candy that I would end up eating—I don’t need it!
We just finished. We estimate that we bought about 460 pieces of candy, and we give out two per kid.
We ran out with kids still wandering the neighborhood.
I usually go to a bar. But since I moved to this house no one has come down my path anyway. My driveway is long and steep and surrounded by trees and I don’t put lights on.
I’m not really into Halloween and the only Halloween event I was invited to was a party 2 hours away. My parents turned all the lights off and watched TV (mom said she felt like Anne Frank) because there are hardly any kids left in our neighborhood anyway. I went to a friend’s house, drank beer and watched TV.
Somone in my neighborhood throws a huge Halloween party for the kiddies, so we just don’t get any trick or treaters. Having kids go door to door begging for sugar–I can’t begin to tell you how many of my principles that violates.
We drank a bottle of wine, turned off the lights, and went to bed early.
I thought I remembered hearing about something like that last year.
We didn’t do any decorations outside at all - and my husband usually goes ALL out. Frankly, I didn’t even want to bother with candy this year, but he put the kabosh on me being that much of a scrooge.
What we ended up doing was him dressed in a long black coat, with sunglasses with red blinking lights in the eye sockets and his hair down sitting on the stoop with the candy very still, until the kids came up then he’d scare 'em. They loved it.