Halloween

San Francisco is a city that celebrates its freakiness, so its no surprise that Halloween in SF is a time of extreme insanity. I feel that Halloween in the Castro is much like Burning Man - something that everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime. Fortunately I've witnessed that spectacle and I'll never ever need to do it again. It's sheer pandemonium, something that becomes less attractive as I age. My all time record for shortest time for Halloween Castro was a total of 5 minutes, when while releaving myself into a bush I turned my head to see DanT passed out on the road surrounded by cops. Good times. Now that 10 people that were shot last night (at 10:40pm no less), I imagine it will never happen again anyways.

Lucky for us, we have friends who live on Fair Oaks in Noe Valley. Fair Oaks gets barricaded off to cars around 6pm and is then in turn is flooded with children. Most of these youngins are sober and do not wield weapons, besides the occasional plastic specter. Almost all the houses really try to step it up with Haunted Houses, Blue Grass bands, and whatnot. Its fantastic.

Zack and Amanda:

have hosted a sweet Halloween party for last 4 or 5 years. They ask everyone to bring a couple bags of candy since the trick or treaters come out in force. Its obscene how much candy they will go through. The earlier you arrive at the party, the more 1-4 year olds you get to see.

A couple years ago they came up the idea of a candy chute. Since they have a deck built on top of their garage, they built a long PVC chute which they can drop candy down. This was a HUGE hit with the kids. So every year they build upon this idea. This year they build this giant Contraption, like a crazy straw on acid, which to drop candy down. Its was AWESOME.
There was often a huge line to receive candy from this beast. It requires at least 3 people to operate this - one to drop the candy, one to help children get their bag under the chute, and someone to direct traffic and keep things orderly. Sadly, my camera was almost out of batteries when I arrived, but I did manage to capture a little bit on film:



Anyhow, we had a great time and so did the kids.

Josh Cohen was dressed as a candy snatcher, complete with 3 or 4 plastic pumpkins full of candy. Around 9, when things had really winded down, there was still a crazy amount of candy left over. I bet this was a first. Josh started dropping obscene amounts of candy down the chute to late comers, laughing manically. The mom's were unpleased, which honestly made it more funny, since I still lie on the side of the fence where you don't have kids. My favorite moment of the evening was when some kids came straggling up street, and Josh asked if they wanted candy. I believe Mom was ahead, hauling their loot home, so they didn't have a bag, and said as much. Josh started to untie one his plastic pumpkins, and while he was considering whether to drop it, Stina quickly reached over, snatched the pumpkin, and dropped it (at least 10 feet up) on the child, who fortunately caught it, and then immediately took off running. It was hysterical. There was no thank you, just empty space which the kid occupied a mere second ago.

Anywho, many thanks to Zack and Amanda for hosting year after year.