Halloween in Greenwich Village

Last night I came out of the NYU class to the middle of the Halloween insanity around NYU and up to Fourteenth Street and right on to 23rd— the cops weren’t letting you through to get to the PATH train till 23rd. I ended up getting a later New Jersey transit train than I'd planned, and that was okay becasue I read a little in the train waiting and had something to eat, and cetera. I didn’t see the real parade, of course, but lots of people dressed up and taking pictures of each other, of themselves with strangers: there must have been tens of thousands of people— it felt like a demonstration, except there was so much preening, so many white angel wings, one transvestive “wedding” party very funny with the biggest guy of course as the bride, plus tons of body suits and fancy gold octupus arms drifting out. Pirates and bikers, although I thing maybe the bikers were really bikers. People milling around, enjoying their own wonderfulness. The pressure of the crowd a little frightening, a little annoying to have to walk so far clutching my bag for fear of pick pockets, but mostly delightful for the concentration of pleasure and mutual admiration.