halloween

Al Roker in Blackface and Other Today Show Halloween Horrors

Caity Weaver · 10/31/13 11:35AM

Halloween descended on New York like Hallowe'en upon a city Thursday, which meant the goons and goblins over at the Today show were up at dawn, peeling off their flaky reptile hides and stretching the skin of real people over their spikey, misshapen bodies. On top of that: a Halloween costume, as is appropriate for the day.

Blessed Be Halloween, America's Only Honest Holiday

Ken Layne · 10/31/13 10:06AM

Halloween digs itself out of the chilly autumn ground for a few weeks each year, too weird and primal for governments or religions to claim. It is an ancient pagan harvest festival and a leering plastic skeleton in a front-yard cemetery of styrofoam tombstones. It is candy and liquor, sex and death, and the only "moral lesson" of Halloween is a sneering threat from a child in the night: Give me mine or you'll get yours, mister. It is the only honest American holiday.

Bad Neighbor Will Hand Out Shaming Letters to Chubby Kids on Halloween

Neetzan Zimmerman · 10/30/13 10:02AM

Vying for the title of "worst house on the block," one North Dakota woman has decided to forego apples and toothbrushes this Halloween in favor of a letter chiding parents of "moderately obese" trick-or-treaters for letting their kids eat candy.

Let's Get Judgmental: Should I Give My Kid Guns for Halloween?

Tom Scocca · 10/28/13 03:00PM

My mom was cleaning out the attic a while ago, and she came up with the homemade cowboy costume I wore when I was five or six. The hat was long gone, but there was a little vest and a set of fuzzy fake-cowhide chaps. It fits my older son, who's in first grade and who didn't have any other Halloween costume lined up.

Meet the Morons Behind the Racist Trayvon Halloween Costumes

Lacey Donohue · 10/27/13 07:22PM

There’s been a lot of conversation this weekend about blackface and its relationship to Halloween costumes, especially in the context of this lovely Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman trio. For those who initially jumped to defend these partiers as “not racist” and "just kids," I’m sorry to break it to you, but thanks to some sleuthing from The Smoking Gun, we can indeed confirm that all three are morons and at least one is an unapologetic racist.

Banksy's Newest NYC Installation: The Grim Reaper in a Bumper Car

Camille Dodero · 10/25/13 06:39PM

At dusk, Banksy revealed the newest piece in his month-long rampage of New York City's streets: a Grim Reaper in a scythe-powered bumper car, listlessly bobbing to Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." The installation sits at the corner of Houston and Elizabeth Streets and, according to Banksy's site, will remain there through Sunday.

Yes, Virginia, Some Halloween Decorations Are Too Scary

Caity Weaver · 10/25/13 03:00PM

“I’m not going to hurt kids,” said documentary filmmaker Joyce Draganosky to the New York Post earlier this week. Here are some of the seasonal items currently festooning Draganosky’s red brick home—the subject of its own dedicated photo galleries on both Gothamist and the Post's website—in the charming Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn: a baby doll lying on the ground with a fake-bloody knife through its forehead; a baby doll chained to a rocking chair with duct tape covering her mouth; a baby doll hung by its hands from a tree branch with a fake-bloody incision in its stomach (into this has been stuffed a smaller fake-bloody baby doll); a baby doll sealed in a jar filled with fake blood; a pumpkin surgeon (presumably unlicensed) looming over a fake-bloody gurney, on which rests baby doll covered in fake blood.