New York's Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween (October 31) in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Stretching more than a mile, this cultural event draws two million spectators, fifty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and circus performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a world-wide television audience of one hundred million.
Among the parade's signature features are its pageant sized puppets — giant rod puppets "articulated" by teams of puppeteers — and its open participation to anyone in a costume who wishes to march. It is the largest public Halloween event in the United States, and the country's only major night parade. It has been called "New York's Carnival." Although the parade is currently not as informal and wild as it was in its earliest years, it is in effect still an alternative festival.
The parade has been featured in many national magazines and travel guides, and has been a subject of study by leading cultural anthropologists. According to The New York Times, "the Halloween Parade is the best entertainment the people of this City ever give the people of this City." "Absolutely anything goes," says USA Today. "Be prepared to drop your jaw."
Read more about New York's Village Halloween Parade: Early Years, Wildly Creative, Annual Theme, Parade Route, External Videos
Famous quotes containing the words york, village and/or parade:
“New York is full of people ... with a feeling for the tangential adventure, the risky adventure, the interlude that’s not likely to end in any double-ring ceremony.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“Zhivago: It seems you bombed the wrong village.
Strelnikov: They always say that. And what does it matter? A village betrays us, a village is burned. The point made.
Zhivago: Your point. Their village.”
—Robert Bolt (1924–1995)
“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)