Trick-or-What? Pandemic Halloween is a mixed bag all around
NEW YORK (AP) — Roving grown-ups tossing candy at kids waiting on lawns. Drive-thru Halloween haunts. Yard parties instead of block parties and parades. Wider paths through corn mazes.
The family holiday so many look forward to each year is going to look different in the pandemic as parents and the people who provide Halloween fun navigate a myriad of restrictions and safety concerns.
Some were looking extra-forward to Halloween this year because it falls on a Saturday, with a monthly blue moon to boot.
Decisions are outstanding in many areas on whether to allow kids to go door to door or car trunk to car trunk in parking lots in search of candy, with Los Angeles first banning trick-or-treating, then downgrading its prohibition to a recommendation.
Other events have been canceled or changed, from California's Half Moon Bay to New York's legendary Sleepy Hollow — and points in between.
On a typical Halloween along Clark Avenue in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves, neighbors go all out to decorate their houses and yards with spooky skeletons, tombstones and jack-o'-lanterns as up to 1,000 people pack the blocked-off street to carry on an old tradition: Tell a joke, get a treat.
Not this year. There will likely be no warm bags of popcorn, cups of hot chocolate or cotton candy doled out in exchange for the laughs as residents figure out how to pivot.
“We plan to decorate the house as usual so families can feel the Halloween spirit on their evening walks," said Kirsten Starzer, mom to two kids, ages 11 and 15. "We will put up a sign that says, `See you next year!'”
Along the Pacific Coast about 25 miles south of San Francisco, this Halloween was meant to be a milestone for the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. The two-day event, now canceled, usually...
