Ed Yourdon
Halloween, Oct 2015 - 10
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
A year ago, I uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr and admitted that while I had lived in New York City for 45 years — I had never previously attended, observed, photographed, or participated in the annual Halloween Parade that takes place in Greenwich Village. I won’t repeat the rest of the meandering blather that I wrote … if you would like to see it, and/or the photos that accompanied the notes, you can find them here on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/albums/72157646748393453
In any case, though, I decided to return to the parade again this year … and, like last year, I got off the subway at the Canal Street (express) station, and walked north to where the cops and the parade-floats, the bands and the professional photographers were gathering in anticipation of another year of festivity.
But I quickly discovered that, while last year’s parade started at 7 PM, when it was already cold and dark, this year’s parade was not scheduled to get started until 9 PM. I realize that 9 PM is quite an early hour for ghouls and vampires, not to mention teenagers, young adults, party-goers, and even the majority of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd who were presumably just getting in their trains and buses to make the trek from the wilderness regions of Long Island and New Jersey. But for those of us slightly (ahem) older than the age of 35, 9 PM is about the time when we turn on last night’s video-recording of Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah, and watch in a glassy-eyed stupor for a few minutes before we begin snoring …
So … I decided not to hang around the official starting position at Spring Street for two or three hours, and instead began wandering further north into the more crowded sections of the West Village — near West 4th Street. And I’m glad I did: while there were no bands or “fancy” displays, there was a lot more energy, and a lot of interesting costumes and people (or ghouls and vampires, depending on your preferences).
The only outcasts, far more confused and lost than the out-of-town tourists, were the cops. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands; and this was two weeks before the recent terrorist attacks, with nobody expecting any trouble more serious than an occasional happy drunkard falling over in the street. Most of the cops that I saw were somehow affiliated with a “Community Affairs” department (or division, or whatever); but what made it funny is that none of them seemed to have a clue where they were. At one point, I stood near a friendly, attentive police officer at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 8th Street — when a tourist (sounding like he was from Germany) wandered up and asked the cop for directions to 9th Street. The cop shrugged politely and said that he really didn’t know — despite the fact that the street sign for 9th Street was clearly visible, less than a block away. I got the impression that the cops had been brought in from such far-away areas as Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx; and while they could have navigated the neatly-rectangularized streets of mid-town Manhattan, they were utterly lost in Greenwich Village.
Oh, well, it didn’t matter. I watched one woman emerge from the subway, reassuring her clearly-terrified friend, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back to New Jersey safely. I promise!” But she took one look at the wildly-costumed crowd around her, near the Waverly Theater, let out a loud “Woo hoo!” squeal, and left her friend behind….
In the midst of all this, I did manage to get some photos … and I’ve uploaded a small subset of them here to Flickr. Enjoy …
Halloween, Oct 2015 - 10
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
A year ago, I uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr and admitted that while I had lived in New York City for 45 years — I had never previously attended, observed, photographed, or participated in the annual Halloween Parade that takes place in Greenwich Village. I won’t repeat the rest of the meandering blather that I wrote … if you would like to see it, and/or the photos that accompanied the notes, you can find them here on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/albums/72157646748393453
In any case, though, I decided to return to the parade again this year … and, like last year, I got off the subway at the Canal Street (express) station, and walked north to where the cops and the parade-floats, the bands and the professional photographers were gathering in anticipation of another year of festivity.
But I quickly discovered that, while last year’s parade started at 7 PM, when it was already cold and dark, this year’s parade was not scheduled to get started until 9 PM. I realize that 9 PM is quite an early hour for ghouls and vampires, not to mention teenagers, young adults, party-goers, and even the majority of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd who were presumably just getting in their trains and buses to make the trek from the wilderness regions of Long Island and New Jersey. But for those of us slightly (ahem) older than the age of 35, 9 PM is about the time when we turn on last night’s video-recording of Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah, and watch in a glassy-eyed stupor for a few minutes before we begin snoring …
So … I decided not to hang around the official starting position at Spring Street for two or three hours, and instead began wandering further north into the more crowded sections of the West Village — near West 4th Street. And I’m glad I did: while there were no bands or “fancy” displays, there was a lot more energy, and a lot of interesting costumes and people (or ghouls and vampires, depending on your preferences).
The only outcasts, far more confused and lost than the out-of-town tourists, were the cops. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands; and this was two weeks before the recent terrorist attacks, with nobody expecting any trouble more serious than an occasional happy drunkard falling over in the street. Most of the cops that I saw were somehow affiliated with a “Community Affairs” department (or division, or whatever); but what made it funny is that none of them seemed to have a clue where they were. At one point, I stood near a friendly, attentive police officer at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 8th Street — when a tourist (sounding like he was from Germany) wandered up and asked the cop for directions to 9th Street. The cop shrugged politely and said that he really didn’t know — despite the fact that the street sign for 9th Street was clearly visible, less than a block away. I got the impression that the cops had been brought in from such far-away areas as Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx; and while they could have navigated the neatly-rectangularized streets of mid-town Manhattan, they were utterly lost in Greenwich Village.
Oh, well, it didn’t matter. I watched one woman emerge from the subway, reassuring her clearly-terrified friend, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back to New Jersey safely. I promise!” But she took one look at the wildly-costumed crowd around her, near the Waverly Theater, let out a loud “Woo hoo!” squeal, and left her friend behind….
In the midst of all this, I did manage to get some photos … and I’ve uploaded a small subset of them here to Flickr. Enjoy …