Belated Halloween Photos

I was in New York for Halloween and spent that evening with friends John and Dana. We went to Inwood park for trick-or-treating. This is one of my favorite parks anywhere and is the only park in the city that contains still-wild native forest.


Parents and their kids gather in one of the fields, and the kids run up to adults and scream, "Trick or treat!" Then the adults give them candy. It's a good idea, I suppose, and keeps parents from having to lug their kids into and out of businesses in the city and means the children don't have to knock on the apartment doors of strangers in their buildings, but it was uncomfortable to me the way everyone just stood around, huddled in a group. We didn't really know how to join in without feeling awkward.


There were a couple of nice homemade costumes...


And one really questionable costume.


John and Dana's daughter says, "Power to the people!" Or pumpkins.


There was a haunted forest and bonfire...


And though the evidence is blurry, you can see Tim Curry even made an appearance.


There were black cats about.


As if to add to the eeriness, something happened to me Halloween afternoon that has never happened to me before in all the years I lived in New York, even when coming back from parties in Brooklyn at 2 o'clock in the morning. Around 3 o'clock that afternoon on the A train, I found myself all alone.


Earlier that day I hung out with Anna and Ben. Their daughter Saida dressed up as Oswald the Octopus, and Hilina went as a ballerina.


And just because, here's a photo of the kids on the tire swing, dressed up as a couple of cute kids from Brooklyn. Tire swings make me so nostalgic.