Halloween ten years later

Tonight, the annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village should have been snaking through the streets of lower Manhattan, a glorious procession of skeletons, drag queens, zombies, superheroes and people who spent an alarming amount of time with a hot glue gun. Instead, Hurricane Sandy had other plans.

For the first time in nearly four decades, the parade was cancelled. Somewhere, I imagine Jack Skellington is staring out over the East River with theatrical disappointment.

Halloween in Chelsea, New York 2002.

Ten years ago I stood on those same streets, wrapped in the autumn cold, watching the Halloween Parade drift past beneath the city lights. It was only a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center. New York was still carrying itself like a boxer who had taken one hell of a punch but refused to stay on the canvas.

Halloween that year wasn’t about forgetting. It was about refusing to surrender the city to fear. Thousands of people put on ridiculous costumes, laughed too loudly and reclaimed the streets one absurd vampire, pirate and alien at a time. Sometimes that’s the bravest thing a city can do.

I still remember the atmosphere. The smell of roasted nuts from a street cart mixing with cigarette smoke. Sirens in the distance, as constant as the heartbeat of Manhattan. Elaborate costumes standing shoulder to shoulder with things that had obviously been assembled five minutes earlier from duct tape and blind optimism. It was messy, loud and unmistakably New York.

Halloween in Gothenburg.

A decade later, another disaster has emptied those same streets. Nature doesn’t negotiate any more than history does. The parade can wait.

Happy Halloween, wherever you are. And here’s hoping the ghosts and goblins of Greenwich Village get another chance to dance next year.