An acquaintance from Australia wants to visit America at Halloween, and especially wants to walk around to see children trick-or-treating. She hasn’t decided on a city yet, and I’m trying to make recommendations. Los Angeles has the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, of course.
My neighborhood is terrific. We’re only the west side between Olympic & Santa Monica and Sepulveda & Westwood. It’s flat with moderate-size houses on small lots, sidewalks, and old-fashioned streetlights. We’re in one of the best school districts in the city, so there are lots of people who moved into the neighborhood just to raise a family. This means a fairly high density of little kids. On Halloween there are dozens of groups wandering around, often with the parents in costume too. At least half the houses have someone at home giving out candy, and many of them have jack o’lanterns and other decorations – some quite elaborate. Be sure to show up before sunset. The littlest kids start circulating while its still light out and the older kids will be mostly done by 8 or 9.
I’m in the San Fernando Valley and I am still completely feeling like I moved to a different planet on Halloween.
Only small, gated areas have trick or treating around here. Here’s the weird part: Most of the kids in costume GO TO THE MALL to trick or treat. Effed up, IMO. All stores from Macy’s to Apple give kids candy while hopefully the adults buy something. :eek:
My mom always drives my daughter and niece to the northern part of Downey, near Stonewood mall, to trick-or-treat, because they have more and better candy than in my neighborhood. It’s a relatively affluent neighborhood, judging by some of the mini-mansions there. There are always little groups of kids, some as old as 14. Last year was the first and only time I took my daughter to a mall to trick-or-treat, because she was sick and I did not feel comfortable letting her run around in the cold air. This year we’ll be back in the same neighborhood.
Haha, I remember trick or treating in the mall once. Is that really so weird?
All I can suggest is to stay away from Bel Air and a lot of other ritzy, sprawling neighborhoods. There won’t be a lot of trick-or-treaters there. The reason being, you’ll trek a long time from house to house, and you’ll have to wait a long time for the residents to make the long journey from their door, across their massive property, and to the gate where you wait.
Okay, this is kind of a specific recommendation, but W. 81st street (zipcode 90045) between Emerson and Dunbarton goes absolutely crazy for Halloween. A good half of the houses on this street put up full-on haunted house decorations, complete with graveyards, mock funerals, witches on roofs, corpses hanging from trees, etc. I seriously have never seen anything like it, and I used to live in Orange County, where some houses got pretty competitive with their decorating. They close off the street and have a block party every year, and it’s full of little kids. (Bonus points: this is the Westchester area, minutes from LAX.)