Oct 31, 2007 11:23 pm US/Eastern
Village Halloween Parade A Ghoulish Good Time
NEW YORK (AP) ―
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New York's annual Village Parade on Halloween always brings out the most creative costumes. (File)
AP
The theme was "Wings of Desire," but costumes of every kind were on display at Greenwich Village's proudly outlandish Halloween parade.
Ensembles ranged from the usual devils and witches to the unusual -- such as the man wearing a box of cereal punctured with plastic knives. Steven Rodriguez, 24, said he was a "serial" killer. Get it?
"A lot of people have been stopping me and they're like, 'What are you?,"' Rodriguez said. Others, he said, got it immediately.
There were prison inmates, Catholic priests, even a box of Trojan condoms. Guises were simple (a Freddy Krueger mask), trendy (Idaho Sen. Larry Craig) and imaginative (the late poet Sylvia Plath's head in a kitchen oven).
"This parade just knocks my sock off," Emma Smith, 27, said shortly after it started. Smith, who recently moved to New York from Chicago, had thought about wearing a costume but decided not to. It was more fun to see the creativity others put into their outfits, she said.
She was among tens of thousands of people crowded behind barricades along Sixth Avenue as the floats, bands, puppets and costumed marchers made their way through the neighborhood that for decades was known as home to Manhattan's oddballs and artists. Onlookers were perched on rooftops, chairs, and U.S. Postal Service mailboxes.
The line between the spectators and parade participants often blurred, with viewers darting from behind barricades into the parade and parade marchers dancing with and playfully taunting onlookers.
The parade, started in 1973 as a neighborhood event for children, has grown to encompass thousands of marchers, floats and giant puppets, with huge crowds of onlookers and television coverage. An unusual admission policy allows anyone wearing a costume to march. All participants have to do is show up at the start line.
As with other years, festivities didn't end with the parade. Even before the march was over, revelers began poring into area bars, restaurants and clubs.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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