Halloween Parade

Halloween is in my blood. I have been hooked ever since my mother put a pantyhose cap on my head and straws in my nose then packed my face with plaster of Paris to make a mask. (The bite-sized Butter-finger candy bars added to the attachment.) It was with this love that I started attending the Park Slope Civic Council’s Children’s Halloween Parade, beginning in 2003 with my then-2-year-old child. She only lasted about 3 blocks but the excitement of the event was akin to the feeling I had when I was young. So when the opportunity arose to help organize the parade, I couldn’t resist. I rolled up my sleeves and dove in.

It’s been a great parade for 22 years but we’re adding some twists to make it even better, including more bands, more giant puppets, and a Haunted House Tour. The biggest change is in our parade route: The 2009 parade will start at 14th Street and 7th Avenue at 6:30pm, travel down 7th to 3rd Street, then turn left down the hill across 6th and 5th Avenues to end in Washington Park and the Old Stone House.

My parade co-chair, Joan Emerson, explains the change: “Park Slope is bigger than just 7th Avenue, and this new route helps us incorporate both 5th and 7th Avenues. It also gives us a place where the bands can keep playing at the end of the parade.” We expect the party to continue in the park until 9pm.

Please help us spread the word about the new route. Also, please, tell us about fabulously decorated houses on your street for our first-ever Haunted House Tour. We’ll put them on a master map that you can download and then take on a stroll down the streets of Park Slope to visit the ghostliest and ghouliest. The House Tour (exteriors only) will take place Oct. 27-31.

This year’s parade theme is “Spooky Seas.” We hope that paradegoers will put their thinking caps on to come up with costumes to fit the festivities including jellyfish, crabs, pi¬rates, starfish, angler fish, scuba divers, sharks, sea monsters and submarines. Anything you can come up with related to watery places is fair game. If you want help with a costume idea, a professional costume designer will be offering advice at the Oct. 18 Harvest Festival at Washington Park/ Old Stone House from 11am-3:30pm. All you might need to help you create a costume will be supplied: material, fringe, elastic, a sewing machine; you name it, we’ve got it. The Harvest Festival will also have its normal cornucopia of fun: pumpkin and face painting, arts and crafts, puppet shows and music.

You can show off your Spooky Seas costumes at the Halloween Costume Contest, which will once again take place in front of the Secondary Schools for Law, Journalism and Research (formerly John Jay High School) at 4pm (earlier this year, since Halloween falls on a Saturday). Contest categories will include Best Theme, Best Classic Character, Best Pop Culture, Best Use of Materials, and Scariest. Business owners from around the Slope will serve as judges.

“It’s amazing how creative and clever people can be in coming up with costumes, and with Spooky Seas as a theme this year, I’m excited to see what folks will come up with” says Melinda Morris, owner of Lion in the Sun and one of this year’s judges.

To add to the pizazz of the parade, we have once again secured the talents of Theresa Lin¬nihan, master puppeteer, who will help us create large-scale puppets with an undersea theme. The highlight of the new puppet collection will be a 20-foot mermaid who will swim down the parade surrounded by fish, sea horses, and turtles. Special thanks to local schools who are making puppets for the parade in after-school programs.

GALLOP, which offers horse-centered therapies for people with physical, cognitive, psychologi¬cal and educational challenges, will be marching with horse costumes. We’ll have Green-Wood Cemetery on hand with giant Statue of Liberty and Minerva puppets, and we welcome the Fa¬mous Accordion Orchestra as a new addition to the music lineup. We welcome back the bands Paprika and Marlon Moore’s Steel Drums, and the master of ceremonies will again be Gersh Kuntzman, editor of the Brooklyn Paper.

Although one of the most fun things about the parade is joining in, participants are urged to fall in after all the bands and puppets pass by to keep everyone safe.

I have traded my plaster of Paris mask and trick-or-treating for costume contests, parades and puppets made of paper maché. While I think it’s a great step up, I may just have to sneak away, knock on some doors and hope for some bite-sized Butterfinger candy bars to top off what will be an amazing night!

–Susan Fox, Trustee and Halloween Parade Co-chair