MEMORIES OF THE GREENWICH VILLAGE HALLOWEEN PARADE. This article by Raquel Laneri in the New York Post brings back memories of the early days of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. The article features an interview with the man who founded the parade in 1974. We found out about the Parade from a New Yorker article in November 1978 by Calvin Trillin, so the two times we marched in the parade were in 1979 and 1980—when the Parade drew crowds in the thousands, not the over one million it draws today.
The Laneri article mentions the people costumed as Imelda Marcos’s shoes in the early days of the Parade.. Mary Jane remembers them, but I don’t. On the other hand, I remember the people from the Fashion Institute of Technology who were costumed as BLT sandwiches, and Mary Jane doesn’t. We both remember the giant spider and giant spider web at the upper levels of the Jefferson Market Library. And we both remember the beautifully executed costumed lobster knocking on the windows of restaurants on Fifth Avenue.