Start your Halloween night off in the afternoon!
(click the poster for a larger view)
Tomorrow night’s the big night. With apologies to “A Christmas Story”, it’s one of the “biggest nights of the kid year”. Anticipation of this sugar-fueled bacchanal has been building in our household for a long time. Looks like we’re going to get lucky and not have to wear rain gear over our costumes this year, too. It’s good to plan ahead in Oregon, and try to direct your kid towards weather safe costumes. Mountain Climber…. Commercial fisherman in yellow rain slicks… Walrus… That sort of thing. Yeah, that doesn’t work in our house either.
Starting off the night tonight will be the Multnomah Village Business Association’s “Halloween in the Village”. Billed as an event to give the kids a safe, fun alternative to the wilds of the untamed village back streets, this event “starts” at Starbucks (where parents can score a free cup of coffee, which will be usefulm it’s going to be cold.) and a walking map of the route. Sounds like a fun event for little kids. Especially if they like advertising! No - really, I’m not trying to be all cynical about this - and Mrs. V and Jr. V will probably go. But I can’t - ’cause I’ll still be at work.
I annoyed Randy at the last MNA meeting by making this comment, but 3:30-5:30PM? I mean, I understand that it costs to stay open late and business owners have kids too and they need to get home and all - but you know, we don’t even pick up Jr. V from Kids’ Corner until around 5:30 usually…
Anyway, that’s nitpicking. This sounds like fun way for little kids and moms and dads that stay at home or get off early to have some fun while it’s still light outside. Thanks to the participating businesses. If I can get off early, maybe I’ll stop in too.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
It was probably a good thing it wasn’t later cause it was PACKED!!! Tye at Thinker Toys said they were expecting about 75 kids and estimated that they had around 700 kids pass through the store. The started out giving away little pumpkin trinkets, then candy that they were going to pass out at home, then Rick from Neighborhood House made a group candy run to the local grocery store, then they started handing out toys from off the shelf(!) near the end of the event!!! Friggin’ CRAZY! Traffic was backed up out of both ends of the village due to crosswalk pattern that emerged…1 car, 100 kids, 1 car, 100 kids… It was super busy, but I would bill it a success for a first time event!
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:42 am
Yes - that’s what I heard! Mrs. V and JR V went up and she called me to warn me not to try to drive through the Village on the way home. What a mob scene!
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Okay, we were told to expect between 70 and 100 at the most of the little goblin type variety. Oh, but no at exactly 3:30 on the dot I was applying a clients color and I look up and see a cute pair of tinker bell kids. I hand them each a tootsie roll and go back to my color client. Within moments there are at least 10 more. We went through 4 bags of candy the large ones Trish at Sweets told us to buy. By 4:30 I had counted at least 800 kids including Moms and Dads dressed in the appropriate Halloween attire. There was Grandma’s and Grandpa’s, sisters and brothers. Baby carriages galore everywhere you could see.
We ran out of candy at approx. 4:40 pm. Kay from the studio came over to see what we had left. Lynn from Edward Jones gave us some suckers which dissapeared before I left her store.
It was a success!!! Maybe next time we should buy more SWEETS.
I did see a traffic cop arrive and guide the cars down the street.
I know that most businesses did not expect such a crowd. And how did all those Mom and Dad’s get out of work so early???
I agree with Brian “CRAZY”!!!!