Last night, Halloween 2007, featured downtown New York’s 34th annual Halloween parade, filling the village with drunks, frat boys, and drunk fratboys.
In my old age I’ve failed to get into the Halloween spirit. I haven’t had much of a costume since I was the Mad Hatter my senior year of High School, and even that just involved wearing a hat. The next few Halloweens are all a blur, culminating last year when I threw on a fur coat and called myself a squirrel. When it comes to Halloween, I like to get out of the Village and head to Lazytown: Population, Me.
This year I was lazy enough not to even TRY to have a costume, so I should have been more impressed by all the girls who put so much effort into wearing so little. But I wasn’t. So my investment banker friends and I traipsed through the village trying to find the best place to go, pointing at people, staring, and doing all those things you’re told not to do when you’re young.
If there’s anything New Yorkers don’t need an excuse to do, it’s drink. For some reason, Halloween has become this kind of surrogate St. Patrick’s day, and St. Patrick’s day is just a more extravagant East Village Saturday, only everyone wears green. Halloween, however, demands everyone be in costume. It’s also a little like the only other holiday that I know involves costumes, Purim.
I was surprised to see that even at 1:00am on a WEDNESDAY night there were still tons of people out drinking. I can’t believe all of those people called in sick to work the next day. I was even witness to a crime, involving one man chasing another man through the streets screaming “Police! Stop that guy! He’s got my shit!” The crowds were horrible, the traffic worse, and the foot-traffic easily reminiscent of Times Square. Despite all this, I think I’d end up traveling to village on Halloween if I didn’t already live there, so I should just stop complaining.
