New York's Village Halloween Parade - Wildly Creative

Wildly Creative

Another distinct feature of the Village Halloween Parade is its costumes, which are limitless in their variety, "bizarre but brilliant" (Fodor's), well-crafted, and highly entertaining. New York is a world center of the visual and performing arts; fashion and costume design; pop-culture; publicity and marketing; communications, education, literature and publishing; and film, theatre and television. Its population is a rich source of pageant devotees who possess the many talents necessary to create the costumes, puppets, performances, and other artistic presentations. Greenwich Village in particular is home to its own brand of bohemian, pagan, counterculture, exotic and erotic costumes, designed by attention-seekers who have gone to great lengths to outdo each other, and pleasure-seekers determined to have fun.

Straightforward, everyday Halloween costume fare — monsters, witches, aliens, pirates, cartoon and storybook characters, animals, royalty and celebrities — are easily upstaged by the unpredictable variety of creations that sometimes defy description. The key to the competition seems to be to come up with a one-of-a-kind, entertaining idea, execute it cleverly, and address the costume's technical and artistic challenges. Simple but clever also works, as well as the absurd juxtaposing of unrelated ideas. There is also strength in numbers in this parade; one may be overlooked dressing like Richard Simmons, but twenty Simmons look-alikes, in wigs and hot pink shorts, cannot fail to attract attention.

The audience is likely to see old women in a Kazoo band, a puppet ship with a full set of sails, a Statue of Liberty stabbed in the chest, a group of bulldogs on leashes all dressed as Batman, skeletons playing the tuba, skeletons dressed as Krispy Kreme employees, brides and grooms, brides and brides, grooms and grooms, politicians, and madrigal drum corps. Onlookers have been entertained by walking Scrabble tiles that rearrange themselves to spell various words; decks of playing cards shuffling up the avenue; and armies of chess pieces marching in regiments of black and white, with small children as pawns.

"Walls are down tonight for the marchers, revealing an indescribably beautiful, powerful, scary realm of diversity," reflects cultural anthropologist Greg Steinbrenner. He recalls once watching a "...group of giddy yuppies dressed as the hundred and one dalmations join forces with 101 other Dalmatians fleeing a Cruella De Vil of questionable gender."

Although the parade is billed as family friendly, costumes depicting sexual organs, paraphernalia, and related themes are common. Walking penises, condoms, faux- bare-chested and bare-bottomed women, and flashers exposing prop privates do not faze the New York audience, and it is rare that anything is banned. (An independent, alternative parade exclusively for small children and their parents takes place in nearby Washington Square Park.) On one occasion, the NYPD prevented The Village Voice's float from entering the parade, on the grounds that its tires were flat, and its float was overloaded with people, some of them throwing things at other marchers. The float featured performer and DJ Lola Rock 'N' Rolla dressed as a vagina . Jen Gapay, promotions director for the Voice, suggested a different reason for the crackdown: "I think it had something to do with the pussy." Lola Rock 'N' Rolla agreed: "If I was a big dick, this never would have happened." Lola finished the parade on foot.