HALLOWEEN PARADE 2007

Rather that watch from the sidelines as we did last year, this time around Cara and I volunteered to be on one of the parade crews that operated the giant puppets that always seem to get the most attention in the news.

I’d signed us up online with what I thought were the big spooky crews, the ones the giant Skeletons and Pumpkinhead Monsters where you’d operate the arms or legs, animate the jaws or something like that. But when we arrived at 5pm for check-in and were directed to what I can best and most affectionately describe as the “Hippie Coalition,” it was clear that rather than ghost and goblins and other frightful fare our selection and our contribution would include a giant Earth Mother that required multiple operators, a solar-powered Sun God, large white Birds (which required a kind of choreographed dancing), and several individual Endangered Species costumes. In other words, The least frightening or sexy get ups one would be able to see or be, except for maybe the few people who dressed up as iPods, or Fred Flintstone or things like that.

Attendance was at first sparse at first, most of the attention directed at small group of painted and brazen topless women, surrounded by dozens of men with cameras exhibiting that usual general fascination people have with exposed tits. In the next hour the area near Broome and Spring started filling up at an alarming rate with every sort of bizarre configuration of costume and projection.

We chose to be Endangered Animals, Cara was the Tree Frog and I was the Alligator/Crocodile thing while others took the Ram, Zebra, Bear/Wallaby and what I think was a Cheetah. They were strange gets ups, difficult at first to get into with cardboard masks that rested on the shoulders, and small sticks attached to cardboard arms to maneuver from under fabric cloaks that suspiciously resembled old curtain material. We held off getting inside our costumes as long as possible, getting to know our fellow Endangereds like Raphael, the friendly NYC student (the Bear/Wallaby?) who was there to get some performing experience and wanting to work with puppets in general.

But we weren’t puppets, we were costumes, and informed our job was to dance around the Earth Mother and work the audience, it was something neither of us had intended to do.

We felt a bit hesitant until we suited up and started gaining momentum from press cameras getting shots of us and the sheer musical buildup that was occurring as night fell, with club-strength techno blasting out of a bus, a Samba band to our right, drum corps to our left, a bikini-clad rock band on the back of a nearby truck and the streets more crowded with revelers by the minute.

We were queued in what was basically the back of the procession, getting ready for our turn to march up Sixth Avenue, and once we had the go ahead and we were in the throng, something came over me (and I know Cara as well) where we basically just lost whatever inhibition we had, it was really pointless to be otherwise. I’ve never had so many cameras in my life taking pictures of me, so if you’re going to get that much attention just for being there you might as well give them their money’s worth.

So for the next hour and half, with own marching band behind us to give us the beat, senseless dancing and nonsense ensued because people just love a parade no matter who is in it. And we were really for the kids for the most part, sticking out their little arms to shake the fake animal leg, I had to be careful with the sharp, pointed claws on my get up that I didn’t go poking hole in anyone or their little eyes out. We had a troupe leader up up front policing the actors, a kind of Nazi when it came to falling out of position ahead of the Earth Mother and too far forward near the birds. She’d chase us back and say something fooling like “dance more, work both sides of the street” as if we could have put any more effort into what we were doing. Sweat was pouring down my back my shoulders started killing me, as I tried to take pictures at the same time. It all became a blur after a while: the thousands of people, the hundreds of cops EVERYWHERE, camera flashes going off every which way. By that time I was senseless, trying to get to people in wheelchairs or anyone old, roaming off the parade route onto side streets and back again. I hugged the trombone player. Someone gave us water and we moved on, more shaking the fake legs, until mine started coming loose from its stick, a staple puncturing my finger. Costumes began to fall apart. What did I care, I was an Endangered Alligator/Crocodile thing. Fuck it.

It all kind of ended in a strange fade out, where we trickled off the parade route to a side street, taking off and handing in our costumes to some guy in a moving van, then simply standing there reeling and wondering what we just did, transformed back into whomever we were before it all happened, but definitely not the same people anymore once it finished.

LEGEND WEEKEND

Knowing it would be hard to top the extravagance of last year’s Headless Horseman horror fest, this season’s Halloween excursion took us by train about a half-hour north to Tarrytown on the Hudson river, a stone’s throw from Sleepy Hollow and location of our destination, the Legend Weekend Nights at the historic Phillipsburg Manor.

We had about two hours of free time on arrival (our tickets had an actual admittance time—8pm) so we wandered from the train station through the largely Dominican downtown community until nightfall, when a commotion of cops and some inquiries led us over to a charming historic neighborhood where the post Halloween Parade party was taking up the entire Main Street. These people seriously get into the scene, and most of the town was decorated and festooned in with ghosts and witch motifs, even the church which I found especially pagan and charming.

This soiree was mostly a family affair with legion of costumed youth dancing to the encouragement of a rather strange kind of MC on a flatbed truck, leading the crowd through a slick, carefully choreographed routine of oddball moves suspiciously similar to a Jazzercise class. Feeling the lack of offspring and fellowship that arises when parents gather en masse, we got some coffee and headed to the Manor.

There was a feeling right off the bat, that though the production on this was going to be rather good (Hitachi was sponsoring after all), like most things we’d seen already (with all the young kids around), it was going to be fairly tame, mostly atmospheric and veering away from the usual gore-filled blood baths. And so a calming lit path took us around a huge pond with its rowboat of ghosts, to a small stage next to a bonfire. For almost an hour a very fine costumed storyteller began our evening, entertaining us with a carefully rendered version of that Washington Irving favorite that runs like blood through this part of the country.

Not so chilled, we afterwards walked the grounds past barns filled with ghostly dancers in period costumes, folk singers, witches conjuring up spells, and a ghostly, lit field where the Headless Horseman was making rather tired rounds much like a animal on display. The entire place was perfectly illuminated and actors wandered about in white pancake as ghostly spirits or portraying fabled characters like Rip Van Winkle, encouraging photo opportunities. It’s amusing to see how people become so careful around these costumed agents, as if they really were the dead, speaking of them in hushed tones and afraid of their approach, scaring themselves because it feels perfectly good to do so. It was a chilly, impeccably clear evening; the moon was waning and while things were not particularly scary, a simple, deeply soothing feeling of the supernatural settled abided over these eerie, comforting tableaus.

A long wooden bridge led us away and out, back onto the street and a walk to the train station, where costumed revelers filled the cars for all night revelry in Manhattan of an entirely different, though more frightening fashion.