This year, Aron and I dressed up as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Or, more accurately, we dressed up as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie and Clyde. The impetus was a colleague’s Halloween party—Friday—with a creative take on the mugg and moll theme: She lives in Jersey City, in a 1922 building built to the specifications of corrupt Mayor Frank Hague. He requested that every apartment contain a private wall safe and, at the party, their safe would be cracked. Whatever loot was there once had been removed long ago, but it was fascinating to learn that the building also had many specially-designed closets to hold tenants’ fur coats, a private chapel for Boss Hague, and his home office—complete with a desk that had a large lap drawer that he could push outward to collect bribes! With pistol and tommy gun in tow, we took the PATH train (it felt odd, plastic or not, to carry guns past the transit police en route) out to Jersey City and had a great night!

We do miss seeing all of the kids trick-or-treating as we used to—the door to door routine is not as common in our building—so the West Village is a fun place to be in the early evening when adorable tots dressed as muscle-bound super heroes, tubby pandas, princesses, and bumble bees stroll between townhouses on Perry Street and Marc Jacobs stores on Bleeker. In one of the squares, people line up their jack-o-lanterns on the lawn and gather for music. This year, we were loving “The Baby Soda Jazz Band.” We’ve heard them in Washington Square Park before—sort of a hot, Dixie-jazz sound.

After swaying to tunes in the square, we moved on—hearing our alter-ego names called out as we walked: “Hey, Bonnie!” “Bonnie and Clyde?” “Bonnie and Clyde!”  And as the night grew dark, we were surrounded by more and more adults in costume. It’s really quite fun to see so many grown-ups getting into the holiday in one big, chaotic party. Yes, many are sexy nurses, or sexy Dorothys, or sexy something-rathers—but there are far more creative costumes. Favorites included Edward Scissorhands, Charlie Chaplin, a puppet on strings, the Shining Twins, and an entire Flinstones family.

Going to the West Village has become a bit of a tradition for us. When we first moved to New York, we wandered over to check out the famous (or infamous) Greenwich Halloween Parade and ended up at Pearl Street Oyster Bar for Lobster Rolls and other delicious treats. This is our third year celebrating Halloween over oysters!

It started to rain as we crossed the parade route back to the East side, but we didn’t mind too much. We were headed home as it were and the best viewing was really not of the parade but of everybody on the slightly less congested surrounding streets as we traveled.

We finished the night with cupcakes from Magnolia bakery and a Halloween-appropriate movie (but nothing too scary for us), Interview with a Vampire.