3 posts tagged “halloween”
Well, another Halloween down. They tried ignoring Halloween, and the crowds grew bigger and rowdier. They tried "cancelling" Halloween, and the crowds grew bigger and more out of control. And they've tried providing entertainment, and still the crowds grow big and wild.
In case you haven't heard the news, the night was relatively calm until about 10:40 when apparently two gangs traded gunfire, injuring 9. Here is the Chronicle coverage.
I wasn't there (residents tend to stay indoors on Halloween) so I can't report firsthand, but I'm quite curious how this will effect the coming supervisor election. Already Alix Rosenthal is capitalizing on this for her campaign. Stay tuned...
It's almost Halloween time, and the Castro is getting into the spirit. Here are some of the holiday-appropriate store windows on display now.
Update! No one will read this, since it is so far down the blog now, but here is another store window that I thought was great:
The latest issue of the Eureka Valley Promotion Association newsletter just came out and it has a report on the latest community meeting where Bevan Dufty outlined his plan for Halloween in the Castro this year.
As most people probably are aware, Halloween is one of the most popular events of the year for the Castro, bringing in huge crowds of celebrants, gawkers, troublemakers, and most irritating of all: people with opinions about how to improve Halloween in the Castro. What was once a celebration of the subversive, artistic, and joyous nature of the burgeoning gay community in the Castro has over the years become the annoying guy who comes and crashes on your sofa every once in a while, eating all your food and making long-distance phone calls, who won't go away even when your carefully worded hints ("Gosh, so, I guess you have to go soon...?") turn blunt ("For the love of God, go the f*ck away."). Now that annoying guy on the couch has brought his chainsaw wielding friends with him.
For a few years the city attempted to divert the party to the Civic Center, but this plan failed for the most part. The Civic Center party never pulled very large attendance, and even those people would drift over to the Castro afterwards.
After the violence of the last couple years, Dufty's plan boils down to the following:
- More law enforcement, enforcing laws more forcefully
- Less entertainment, with a single stage set up at 16th and Market
- Earlier shutdown, with street cleaning beginning at 11pm
In general, I agree with the attempt to calm things down, and those ideas seem like good ones, but a final quote from the article concerns me. The EVPA's description of the meeting ends with this:
To the delight of virtually everyone at
the meeting, Supervisor Dufty reiterated that this year’s
plan is the first step of a multi-year strategy to make Halloween
in the Castro a non-event that no longer attracts
hundreds of thousands of people from outside the
neighborhood.
I just don't think that Halloween will become a non-event here, and I worry that energy put toward eliminating it would be better spent toward making it manageable.
