Halloween in Berkeley

I showed up at my mom’s house at 4:30pm yesterday and nothing was ready. There were pumpkins to carve, spiders to hang, dead bodies to stuff, scary CDs to play – a whole porch to decorate. The street I grew up on is the Halloween capital of North Berkeley. Every costume-clad child for miles around shows up, pillow case in hand. And every house on the street is expected to impress. If you do not turn your house into a haunted horror spooktacular, you are shunned by every neighbor and trick-or-treator alike.

Luckily, we managed to get the place scary enough before the first Harry Potter costume showed up. And by the tenth Harry Potter, we had found our groove.

You have to see our street to believe it. There is no time to close the door and wait for the bell to ring. From about 5:30-8:30, there is a steady stream of children filing on and off the porch. At some points there would be bottlenecks – the cardboard and wood archway at the top of the stairs fell over onto multiple children. Still don’t get the picture? My mom spent $170 on assorted Halloween candy.

It’s always fun to see how different families treat Halloween. I was forced to take more than one photo with babies in chicken outfits, and I wasn’t even wearing a costume. I think the new parents were a little overexcited by “Pablito’s first Halloween!” Then there were the teenagers who’d show up in street clothes and a Freddy mask, saying things like: “Can I have Nerds instead of Jolly Ranchers?” “Can I have red?” “Can I take both?” and my favorite: “I can’t eat Skittles because of my braces, can I have M&Ms?”

Then there were the clever costumes, “I’m a chick-magnet,” a 12-year-old boy told me as I eyed the giant papermache horseshoe magnet around his neck affixed with tiny furry chicks. I’m sure you are.

I also cracked up at all the little girls dressed in 80’s outfits. Now I know what it feels like for my parents when I used to dress up for 70’s day at school. The girls would just shrug their one exposed shoulder when I’d say “I used to dress like that everyday for school, ya know.” When did I get so old?

During the three hours I spent passing out candy, I managed to eat so many Nerds and M&Ms, so many Twix bars and individually wrapped Twizzlers, that eventually I made my self sick. Some Halloween traditions never die.