New York Halloween - More than Enough Candy to Share!!

We don't go all that crazy on Halloween. But the Little Lady does like to make her rounds for some candy. We have a perfect neighborhood back in Knoxville for trick-or-treating -- houses with great architecture and fun decorations, plenty of friends to connect with along the way, safe sidewalks, and lots of generous folks handing out candy. It's a good time. And it's a lot different than the upper east side of New York. Here's how we did it this year.

First, the event gets rolling a little earlier here in the big city. As soon as school let out at 3, things got going quickly. Here, you see, a large percentage of the candy handed out is distributed by businesses. And you have to get there early or they run out. The Midtown East Partnership, a business group for the neighborhood just a few blocks to our south, sponsored a big event this year complete with a map of businesses that would be handing out candy. We took full advantage.

Second, the more "traditional" trick-or-treat spots get totally over-run by people. For example, 78th street (about a dozen or so blocks north of our apartment) is well known for having town homes that go all out for Halloween. And it's not a well-kept secret. Thus, you get a ton of people crammed into a fairly small space. Most of the housing is tall apartment buildings, so the lower density residential areas are a big draw for those seeking a more typical walk around the neighborhood knocking on doors feel.

So 78th Street is busy. But they close down a couple blocks so everyone can roam the street safely (save for some middle-school kids who started in on the candy a little too early and were even less able to control themselves than usual, I suspect). There were some really cool decorations. And the gothic architecture on some of these places really captures the Halloween mood. Here are some photos. They are not great but you can hopefully get the idea of the crowd and some of the decorations as well. And a few places were handing out hundreds and hundreds of FULL SIZE CANDY BARS. Nice!

After walking back from the insanity of 78th Street, we made our way through our apartment building for phase three. It is all very organized. The building sent out a notice about Halloween last week asking for anyone who wanted to give out candy to sign up. Then on Halloween the front desk attendant hands out the list of participating apartments. It was also a nice way to meet some of the neighbors. In fact, we learned that former Pittsburgh Steelers football coach Bill Cowher and his wife live a few floors above us.

Finally, like most of life in NYC, we found this to be very efficient. We were able to knock on an amazing number of doors in a very short amount of time. The weather was perfect. Just cold enough to feel like fall and not any colder. And even in the big city we bumped into people we knew while out and about, crossing paths with one of the Little Lady's best friends from school a few blocks away. And, finally, here is the haul. For comparison, I'll let you see Donald Trump Jr.'s now infamous tweet. I also note that our Little Lady is happy to share some of her candy if Chloe didn't accumulate enough to share with others this year. We support progressive candy taxation in our family. And also generosity and kindness toward others, for that matter. After all, nobody would have any candy in their baskets on Halloween without a heck of a lot of generosity.