Halloween: NYC vs NP

This past weekend was Halloween, and for our third year, we joined in the Halloween parade down Main Street. This year, Maeve was dressed as a Devil Fairy; Emmett went as Percy Jackson, and Fiona was a Shadow Hunter from the Mortal Instruments series. For the 2nd year, I dressed as a headless giant holding his own head. The weather mostly cooperated, tho there were a few moments of drizzle.

About 5,000 people were in attendance as usual; people come from other towns just to strut their stuff down the strip and to marvel at the ingenuity of others. I particularly enjoyed seeing the people who went as home-made Tetris pieces and the man who dressed as Super Mario.

Luxury apartment buildings have their perks, but there are unexpected down sides. My mother's building, for example, was a great place to celebrate Halloween when my brother and I were kids. Back then, there were many children in the building, and it could take ages to get to all of the apartments even after the building instituted the sign-up sheets in the elevators. The sheets meant that trick-or-treaters could quickly decide which floors to hit and in what order, but there was still the delay caused by the glut of costumed kids patrolling for candy. But as apartment prices began escalating, the building underwent a change in its occupants. Once it was a place for young upper middle class families, but as the prices for apartments shot past a million dollars back in the '90s, the new buyers needed more money than a typical young doctor, lawyer, or pair of teachers could afford. Many of the dwellers stayed in their apartments, as my mother has done, and those who moved out were replaced by ultra-wealthy folks whose children, for the most part, were already teenagers or had already grown up. When I was young, the A/B elevator used to have at least a dozen kids living in 5 or 6 apartments. The sign-up sheet usually boasted at least as many apartments giving away candy. These days, of the 29 apartments in that line, there is currently only one apartment housing any children; it happens to have three, tho one or two of them might be too old for dressing up and seeking candy. In a few years, the kids in this apartment will grow up, and unless some new kids move in on that side of the building, there will be no children on the A/B line. The sign-up sheet this year was all but blank -- only two apartments were taking trick-or-treaters. I guess there was little harm in that: the entire building doesn't have enough school-age inhabitants to fill a small school bus.

Halloween is yet another reason to move to New Paltz. And don't even get me started on how the Macy*s Day parade has ruined Thanksgiving for me. That's a story for another blog.