Right before my friend and I headed out the door on Saturday, she asked "When do you think we will be too old to dress up for Halloween?"
"Never," I said.
Flash forward two hours and we're trudging through West Village in NYC on a drizzly, cold night with about 100,000 other people in all manner of costumes clogging the streets - it really looked like the night of the living dead. The bouncer at the bar we're supposed to go to says the club is full, and we can't get in, even though my friend totally knows the DJ. And every other bar has a line out the door.
"Remember when you asked when we would be too old for Halloween?" I said. "I think I might be too old."
But we ended up getting in to the bar and everything turned out fine, so I retract that statement. Halloween forever! Especially Halloween in New York City. I feel like you could say, "Nice Halloween costume," to a fair number of people there and they would say in response, "Halloween?"
We were standing on the apartment stoop, about to leave, opening our umbrellas, when a dude walked by wearing cowboy boots, shiny blue spandex pants and a blonde mullet wig. "Hey," he called out. "Does this costume make me look like the Unabomber?"
"No," I said, but then I thought about it. "A disco Unabomber."
He laughed and I decided I heart New York, just like the t-shirt says. I had the same thought last spring in NY when someone on a unicycle sped past me on the sidewalk.
Here's what I was this year:
A chain-smoking 70s tennis player. Complete with wooden racquet, some American Apparel socks and an absolutely perfect vintage tennis sweater purchased a thrift store in San Francisco. The rest of the stuff I already own. Is it a bad sign when your normal clothes can easily become a Halloween costume?
Reaching for a serve.
Editor's Note: I don't smoke.
The costume got good feedback from drunks on the street, the finest arbitrators of taste. Choice comments: "Nice socks" (said with a lot of sincerity), "Rod Laver?" and my favorite, "Tennis! I know that." Yes, I dressed as Tennis, encompassing the concept and the sport in its entirety.
But at the party, I saw a guy dressed in old-school tennis wear, carrying an aluminum racquet, and actually smoking. I was torn between thinking that this could be my soulmate, and being annoyed that my costume was so unoriginal.
