It’ll be party time Friday night at the forty-first annual Village Halloween Parade
Friday, October 31, 7:00 – 11:00
Sixth Ave. South & Spring St. to 16th St.
Admission/participation: free, but donations accepted
www.halloween-nyc.com
With the growing popularity of the Mermaid Parade and the Gay Pride March, the Village Halloween Parade might have lost its unique stature, but there’s still nothing quite like this annual tradition. The theme of the forty-first annual event is the Garden of Earthly Delights, so an endless pageantry of pleasure should be on display as hundreds of puppets, more than fifty music and dance groups, and just plain folk dress up and make their way from Sixth Ave. and Spring St. to Sixteenth St., led by Grand Marshal Whoopi Goldberg. As artistic and producing director Jeanne Fleming and master puppeteer Alex Kahn explain, “Although one often associates Halloween with things Infernal, this year’s Halloween Parade is headed to Paradise, or more specifically the Garden of Earthly Delights. Join us as we unearth the layers of Hieronymus Bosch’s timeless altarpiece, exploring the precarious borderland Garden between the primeval terrors of wilderness and the modern confines of civility. . . . It is a place of infinite possibilities and permutations contained within a finite and intimate space. Gardens are also places of forbidden delights and forgotten joys hidden away behind ivied walls and locked gates.” All costumed souls are invited to participate in the parade; just follow the very specific instructions here. And be on the lookout for the raising of the giant puppets, a treat not unlike the blowing-up of the balloons for the Thanksgiving Day Parade.