Halloween

[BrandonUptown]

Hey everyone,
What day is Halloween being celebrated on this year? Where I live, Its on Saturday, is it like this anywhere else? Also, do kids Trick-or-Treat in NYC? What do they do go into a building and go door to door in each hall??? Do a lot of people give out candy? Do a lot of kids TOT in NY?

[yyy]

I'm going to find it out while looking at some webcams :) I still haven't seen anyone in a custom :( Maybe later. Happy Halloween everybody !

[ZippyTheChimp]

The Grim Raker of Central Park harvesting trick-or-treaters.
http://www.pbase.com/image/35766552.jpg

[BigMac]

NY1
Cotober 14, 2005

Lower East Side Haunted House Opens To Public

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/88/174716.jpg

With a little more than two weeks to go until Halloween, some witches and goblins are extending an invitation to their haunted house on the Lower East Side.

The nightmare house is the creation of some of the city's visual artists, theatre directors and designers.

The house opens to the public Friday night and will remain open through Halloween.

For more information, check out www.hauntedhousenyc.com.

Copyright © 2005 NY1 News

[lofter1]

In NYC the Village Hallowe'en Parade always happens on the 31st.


https://www.groundspring.org/org_logos/vhplogo.gif

http://www.halloween-nyc.com/index.php

[NYC]

NY1
Cotober 14, 2005

Lower East Side Haunted House Opens To Public

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/88/174716.jpg

With a little more than two weeks to go until Halloween, some witches and goblins are extending an invitation to their haunted house on the Lower East Side.

The nightmare house is the creation of some of the city's visual artists, theatre directors and designers.

The house opens to the public Friday night and will remain open through Halloween.

For more information, check out www.hauntedhousenyc.com (http://www.hauntedhousenyc.com).

Copyright © 2005 NY1 News

I went to this one, it was OK. I have heard that Blood Manor was supposed to be scarier. This one is still a bit of a work in progress.

[NewYorkYankee]

My friends and I might go to the one in the LES. Where can I find out about the most scary ones in
NYC?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Pumpkins at the Chelsea Market

http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/2808/chelseamrkt105sk.th.jpg (http://img427.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chelseamrkt105sk.jpg)

[LeCom]

The Forest of Fear in Tuxedo, NY, right north of NJ. Hope to see some wicked clown stuff. Later we have a mischief night planned. The next day is Halloween. Fun fun fun.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The Village Halloween Parade was great this year.

The best costume I saw was what I'll call "Garbage Man" - a guy in a body suit with 3-D puzzle pieces attached. When he stopped, and folded himself down into a crouch, he formed a garbage can, with a lid.

[Comelade]

See the gallery of photographs on Halloween at the Village
http://photos.halloween-nyc.com/

[ZippyTheChimp]

:eek:

http://photos.halloween-nyc.com/gallery/936063/5/42866780

[NewYorkYankee]

I went to the Halloween parade, we walked in it the entire time. My friends wanted to be in it, rather than watch. I wish we couldve watched, I didnt see too much. Next year Ill have to make a better costume, I was a generic Vampire this year.

[Edward]

Halloween coming to New York.

http://static.flickr.com/106/284274101_868d82198d_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudentas/sets/72157594353132741/)

http://static.flickr.com/122/284274338_6f032eedf0_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudentas/sets/72157594353132741/)

[wonder]

The trick-or-treaters are arriving and I have enough candy. Unfortunnatly I can't get to have much fun because i have to do some work. How is halloween going for all of you?

[Front_Porch]

Marched in the parade with about ten friends, boring for the forty-five minutes it takes to get into the line of march, then pretty fun.

Lots of Borats.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Great parade last night, and perfect weather.

[MidtownGuy]

NOWHERE does Halloween like NYC! Last night's Halloween festivities downtown were, as usual, an amazing display of creativity and community. I was so proud to be a New Yorker.
Here are some pictures, most of the ones I tried taking were too dark.

http://static.flickr.com/121/285852039_d989fd8f16_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/100/285852048_33e5de7bea_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/99/285852057_42c0f245e7_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/118/285852061_9711eec9b2_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/104/285852068_812802b29c_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/112/285852090_26bd634392_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/104/285858794_437f2b87e5_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/117/285858797_8779d400c2_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/100/285858804_4b67f322b4_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/112/285858806_eef0e17ed8_b.jpg

I also took a couple of videos that will be done uploading later, when I'll post a link.

[MidtownGuy]

http://static.flickr.com/113/285893205_dc127e72f9_b.jpg

[MidtownGuy]

These are links to short videos I took with my ordinary camera- they came out pretty decent though.It's worth letting them stream a bit ahead so the watchin' is smooth when you back it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_pFuh9MTRw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lf1RE062Bo

[Punzie]

Zippy, do you have pics from the parade? I had to miss it this year... the first time in ages.:(

[krulltime]

^ Hey MidtownGuy, thanks for the photos and the links. I need to see this parade one day. :)

[NewYorkDoc]

Everyone have their costumes ready for the parade? I'm volunteering as a puppeteer this year, we'll see how that goes.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_232/paradesfounder.html

Parade’s founder, 3 decades later

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_232/ralph.gif
Downtown Express photo by Brett C Vermilyea
Ralph Lee in his Greenwich Village studio this year
By Jerry Tallmer

It isn’t everybody who once built a life-sized Fred Astaire for ventriloquist and puppeteer Shari Lewis to dance with.

For that matter, it isn’t everybody who has a large, disagreeable Two-Headed Pig Beast lurking against one wall of his and his wife’s rambling Westbeth apartment.

Ralph Lee is the culprit in both cases. “I built that for ‘Back Bog Beast Bait,’ a Sam Shepard play in the early ’70s,” Lee says of the Pig Beast. “The head is made of Celastic, a glorified papier mache; the body is plastic foam and cloth and latex. I knew him, Shepard, when I was acting with [Joe Chaikin’s] Open Theater, and had designed Sam’s ‘Mad Pig Blues.’”

And the mobile Fred Astaire for Shari Lewis?

“A very tricky thing,” says Lee. “One of her arms went into the back of the puppet. She controlled it with a stick. There was a cord to operate the head, and a false arm, and her shoes were attached to the shoes of the puppet.”

Does he know where that Fred Astaire is today?

“Beats me,” says Lee, in the vernacular of the World War II of his early boyhood. Seven decades later he is almost Shakespearean to look at, hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed, the fine white head of hair (eyeglasses crowning it) a twin to the sharp-pointed fine white beard. For all the at-home hot-weather garb — sandals, blue shorts, darker blue sports shirt — one is indeed put in mind of, oh, Lear, but a Lear uncrushed by time or tragedy.

Once you have built a dancing Fred Astaire and a Two-Headed Pig Beast, the bringing into birth a Greenwich Village Halloween Parade — now in its 33rd year — is child’s play. Well, almost.

Sometime in what must have been 1972 or ’73, Ralph Lee — by then a puppet- and mask-maker of some reputation — was approached by actor George Bartenieff, who with wife Crystal Field had launched their Theater for the New City right here in Westbeth.

“Halloween was always my favorite holiday as a kid, and now,” says Lee, “I had three children of my own — Heather, Jennifer and Josh. Yes, in this very apartment. And I felt they didn’t have any very satisfactory way of celebrating Halloween.”

There already existed a Gay Parade in the Village — ever since Stonewall ’69. This would be something else. “But I had to put George’s idea on the back burner, because I was touring with the Open Theater.”

In the spring of 1974 there was an Outdoor Extravaganza at Bennington College, in Vermont, where Lee was doing a stint of teaching, not all that far from another college town, the Middlebury, Vt., where — his mother a teacher of modern dance, his father the dean of men — he’d been born and raised.

“The Extravaganza took place all over the Bennington campus, with all sorts of larger-than-life puppets. I orchestrated the whole thing, and felt that they had a life of their own. That fall I decided I could devote some time to the same sort of thing here in New York.”

The first Village Halloween Parade took place in the fall of 1974.

“I created — let’s see — a half-dozen or more giant puppets I’d made for other situations. That was the backbone. Plus around a hundred masks. George and Crystal were the producing agents for this event. [Several years later the TNC and the Halloween Parade went their separate ways.] It started at 6 p.m. at Jane Street and went through the courtyard here at Westbeth and then cut diagonally through the West Village, ending up at Washington Square. The idea was a parade for families, kids, straights, gays, everybody.”

There were, he recalls, about 200 people in the parade itself, and many more looking on — a number that would balloon through the years, once television got into the act, to what Lee estimates to be 200,000 annual participants and/or onlookers.

In short order kids in schools would be making puppets of their own. “The School of Visual Arts came up with some amazing things. We began to get steel bands, Dixieland bands, samba bands, Chinese dancers. We had very good relations with the police. They said the crime rate in the Village went down during these events. The streets were liberated of vehicles, and the parade floats were pushed or pulled.”

Ralph Lee’s glistening blue eyes darken as he says: “It was my hope that, rather than everybody coming to the Village, they do their own in their own community. We didn’t need New Jersey or Long Island. But it didn’t happen. Finally the police began to get concerned. They decided to reroute the parade straight up Sixth Avenue. I directed the whole thing for 12 years, and then I quit.”

It got too big for you?

“It got too big for me.”

What is not too big for him, or not yet, is the Metawee River Theatre Company, a far-sighted upstate troupe that takes its inspiration from myths, legends and folklore, takes its name from a stream that wanders down through Vermont and New York State to the Hudson, its masks and giant puppets from the hands and imagination of Ralph Lee.

It was founded in 1975 by six Bennington College graduates, one of them the Casey Compton who had been one of Lee’s students and has ever since been his wife. “But no hanky-panky until she was out of college.” Ms. Compton is also the company’s costumer and managing director.

“I was busy on another project that first season” — i.e., Greenwich Village Halloween — “but was curious about this, and the next year they asked me to come on board as artistic director. And the Metawee idea shifted from doing theater in town halls and small venues indoors, mostly without air-conditioning, to doing it outdoors, in such sites as the Bishop’s Green,” a patch of grass adjacent to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St. — “the one place in New York City you can be outdoors at night in relative safety. We now also do a five-and-a-half-week season at Lincoln Center.” For this year’s “Peace,” Aristophanes `a la Metawee, Lee has provided puppets of War, Greed, Abundance, a Soothsayer, a Giant Dung Beetle, and, well, Peace.

Where do you keep these things, Ralph, between productions?

“Aha. Major problem. They come apart. The lighter they are, the more breathable they are. Metawee’s been wonderful for me; kind of like a laboratory. It has enabled me and my wife to explore the many ways masks and puppets can be used, and the relationships of these things to the actors.

“Metawee has found a devoted audience upstate that comes out annually to see what the hell we’ve done next. The myths and legends we deal with seem to hold meaning nowadays, even though they’re thousands of years old.”

All this began, as far as Ralph Lee is concerned, not thousands of years but 72 years ago, when, in Middlebury, Vt., he entered a world “where, from the age of 7, I wanted to be in theater. All my childhood I’d been making puppets and masks. My first Halloween masks were for a Halloween parade in our town.”

When you say “our town,” one thinks of Thornton Wilder.

“Well, it can very easily blur into that.”

What theater had you seen?

“Very little. Plays at college. Shows coming through. I can remember seeing [monologist and author] Cornelia Otis Skinner doing the wives of Henry VIII. From Middlebury High School I went on to Taft for two years and then to Amherst, where I got my B.A. in Fine Arts in 1957. Spent most of my time in the theater.

“When I first came to New York in 1959 I was determined to be an actor. Studied acting with Michael Howard, and was actually in a [1960] Broadway production of Camus’s Caligula directed by Sidney Lumet at the 54th Street Theater. Colleen Dewhurst was in it. Kenneth Haigh [who’d starred in Look Back in Anger] was Caligula. Didn’t last long. Those were the days when you did plays with more than two people.”

It was as an Indian of the Andes in The Royal Hunt of the Sun [1965] that Ralph got to know costume designer Ray Diffen, for whom he subsequently went to work during a Stratford, Conn., American Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest that starred Morris Carnovsky as Prospero. “I ended up making masks for all the inhabitants of the lost isle.”

So here we are in the mid-’60s and Ralph Lee has connected with Joe Chaikin and Sam Shepard and the Open Theater, as participant in such famous productions as The Serpent and Terminal and Cowboy Mouth and Mad Pig Blues, not to be confused with Two-Headed Pig Beast.

“For that show I made Babe the Blue Ox, from the Paul Bunyan stories, and ended up acting in it too, as Jessie James, opposite Sam’s wife O-Lan as Mae West.”

Patron saint of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, you might say. Then again, you might not.

The Village Parade will go up Sixth Ave. from Spring St. at 7 p.m., Oct. 31.

[Front_Porch]

Nice this year -- a very good "fat Britney" -- and "Richard Simmons" was great -- anybody have pix?

ali r.
[downtown broker, bad photog]

[NYatKNIGHT]

^I wish, parade and costumes did not disappoint. I don't think I remember there ever being as many spectators or participants as there were last night.

[21&Invincible]

It was my first time going to the parade and I had so much fun! There was such a great vibe and atmosphere. It was cool seeing all the costumes and creativity. Perhaps most of all, it was great to see so many people gathered in celebration. I definitely can't wait for next year.

Oh and I went as a tree.

[MidtownGuy]

The Halloween parade is my favorite city event, no question. I'm so sad because I hurt my foot and couldn't go this year...if anyone has pics to share that would be really appreciated!

[NYC4Life]

NY1

Updated 11:07 AM

Halloween Parade To March Through Village

http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1705/90239921uz3.jpg

Halloween means tricks and treats for many, as well as the return of the Village Halloween Parade.

The 35th annual celebration begins tonight at 7 p.m., when thousands will gather to show off how frightening and funny their costumes can be.

The parade stretches down Sixth Avenue, beginning at Spring Street and wrapping up on 21st Street.

The parade typically attracts 60,000 costumed participants.

However, the country's economic woes are even taking a toll on Halloween.

The annual Village Halloween Parade's artistic director says seven of the parade's major sponsors have pulled out – cutting the parade's budget in half.

Some of the cost-cutting measures include cutting special lighting that brightens the parade route and having staffers work for free.

Meanwhile, with Halloween falling on a Friday, the Port Authority Police Department will be on the lookout for party-goers who drive after having too much to drink.

The department is setting up DWI checkpoints at the Port Authority's Hudson River crossings this weekend.

Drivers using the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the George Washington Bridge will be subject to inspection.

Live Parade Coverage
You can catch all the action right here on NY1. John Schiumo, George Whipple and Jill Scott will host our live coverage of the parade beginning tonight at 8.



Copyright © 2008 NY1 News. All rights reserved.

[NYC4Life]

NY1

Updated 12:42 AM

Halloween Parade Spooks Manhattan

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/6248/64256708ef7.jpg

Halloween means tricks and treats for many, as well as the return of the Village Halloween Parade.

The 35th annual celebration began at 7 p.m., and thousands walked up Sixth Avenue from Spring Street to 21st Street to show off their frightening or funny costumes.

The warm October weather helped bring out an estimated 60,000 costumed participants and an estimated 1.8 million spectators, according to parade marshals.

The parade's theme was "Ghosts," recalling the ancient tradition that wearing costumes would help appease spirits.

http://media.ny1.com/media/2008/11/1/images/01Halloween3.jpg

However, the country's economic woes could not be appeased and took a toll on the Halloween parade.

The annual Village Halloween Parade's artistic director, Jeanne Fleming, said seven of the parade's major sponsors have pulled out, cutting the parade's budget in half.

Some of the cost-cutting measures included cutting special lighting that brightens the parade route and having staffers work for free. Fleming said such moves did not stop the carnival-like atmosphere.

http://media.ny1.com/media/2008/11/1/images/02Halloween4.jpg

"It's the spirit of New York that is just never going to be suppressed. It's always going to rise up," said Fleming.

Nevertheless, parade-goers came out to show off their quirky, often homemade takes on the supernatural, pop culture and politics.

Among the marchers were elaborate floats, marching bands and a group of tens of people dressed as zombies and dancing in unison to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

Politically-themed costumes were common, and included the two presidential candidates, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and even a voting booth.

Other more complex costumes included an oven, a photo booth and Brooklyn's Cyclone rollercoaster.

Onlookers enjoyed the parade's intense, creative spirit.

http://media.ny1.com/media/2008/11/1/images/03McC_kisses_O.jpg

"This is my first year at the parade ever. I don't dress up, but I'm here and I'm having the greatest time and I'm ready to go," said a parade attendee.

One man was even dressed as NY1's morning anchor Pat Kiernan, seated at a portable desk for an "In The Papers" segment.

"I watch Pat every morning, love it, couldn't be anybody better," said the local news fan.

http://media.ny1.com/media/2008/11/1/images/04Halloween_Pat.jpg

Many costumed marchers said they took days and even weeks to put together their costumes, and some have probably started to plan out next year's costumes.


Copyright © 2008 NY1 News. All rights reserved.

[Ninjahedge]

http://media.ny1.com/media/2008/11/1/images/01Halloween3.jpg

Funny thing? I saw these guys waiting for a cab outside Grand Central on my way home on Friday. Took me a second to figure it out. I was wondering why there was only Fred and Betty, but then I saw Wilma's red 'do and that was that! ;)