The past couple of years, the amount of kids out on Halloween has dwindled down in my neighborhood. This year, my wife and I were at her cousin’s house and we saw maybe a couple of kids walking around. My wife blames people going to Trunk or Treat things. We both work in retail, so we see more of the public, and nobody was in costume. What was everybody’s experience with Halloween this year?
Our town had the usual in town loop (Downtown is a 4x4 block grid) all the buisnesses handing out candy a couple of the bars haning mini shots for the parents, etc, with main street closed off, a band playing, fire dept, police, and some of the bigger buisnesses without a storefront down town staging their Halloween stuff in there. There was also the usual lead in- to town (its fairly traditional for all the houses to have candy starting about 1 mile out of town on the main road in- often with the caretakers/ property manager cos doing candy on their properties on the behalf of the rich owners who only visit seasonally)
There were also 4 different neighborhoods sort of actively advertising they were ‘open’ for trick or treaters- wirh residents telling everyone to make sure to hit up their blocks. 2 of them were blocks with a sort of critical mass of young families, and 2 were somw of the larger, denser areas so better for foot traffic.
Our towns kind of difficult demographics wise though- in addition to the whole young families having trouble affording homes, and aging population problems felt everywhere, were a seasonal beach resort town, so probably 60% of the houses are closed for the season by Halloween.