ppsst… we promise, really, no party in the Castro
this has got to be the most unpersuasive way of telling people to stay home for halloween. i actually looked up lame in a thesaurus to get more words to describe this city’s lack of creativity for dealing with this situation.
personally, Halloween’s not really my holiday, but i love a good street party. i happened to be in Dallas this time last year and ended up attending their queer neighborhood’s street event. it was an absolute blast full of dancing, costumes and even a runway in the center for the more exhibitionist types to show their stuff. so maybe you think dallas is smaller, or safer, and that’s why they can get away with a party.
but wait! NYC is prepping for it’s 34th annual Halloween parade in the village! 34th year. complete with a website and corporate sponsors. apparently they’ve figured out how to throw a party. but i guess that’s not too surprising from the people who host new years at times square (which you couldn’t pay me to attend.) and they aren’t the only city that makes it work.
here in San Francisco our city leaders are too busy locking up homeless people to figure out how to throw a safe night event. despite promises to set up a task force and hold community meetings, our teflon coated mayor and weak Castro supervisor never followed through. they threw in the towel and gave up a long time ago. don’t believe their spin that Halloween got out of control, the city actively chose not to figure how how to manage the party. they’ve been looking for a way to shut it down for a while and last year’s shooting gave the perfect out. no matter what the city does, there will be people in the Castro on Halloween. thankfully a tireless group of activists have formed Citizens for Halloween in order to do some self-policing and make the night safe and fun.
of course, the bigger story is that due to a virtually uncontested mayoral race just mere weeks before an election we are spending more time talking about a party then we are talking about the larger, year-round issues in this city.
in closing i bring you some of the hastily produced PSA’s out there to dissuade you from even thinking about visiting the Castro.
i always do what my local cartoonist tells me to…
who produced this? was he even wearing a mike?
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