FRC only by virtue of Halloween...

E

erininny

Well-known member
I'm not sure if it's just because it's Saturday, or if this is a New York/big city thing, but our entire neighborhood (20 min. from midtown Manhattan) is crammed with kids trick-or-treating at stores and restaurants. !!! (Pardon the gratuitous and faulty use of exclamation points.)

So now I'm obsessed with figuring out if this is isolated to New York, to big cities in general, or to the country in general. I have never seen this before! In my day, we only got to trick-or-treat at houses!

Tell me, is this a national phenomenon? The eight-year-old in me, who grew up in the suburbs, is very jealous of these city kids. smileys/wink.gif

 
I've never heard of kids t or t at stores or eating establishments. I would think restaurant owners

would object. Stores too! I've never seen the extent of Halloween decorating, advertising or featuring on news shows either. What's UP???? (grat use of question mark intended) Yikes!

 
We will be heading out to our "village" shopping area in a few hours for trick or treating

The stores and restaurants will have candy and other treats for the kids (and grown ups).

DH will then take the kids around the local neighborhood for round two, they might visit about a dozen or so houses.

I think this is popular for a number of reasons:

1 - Despite the fact that there have been no documented cases of strangers giving away tainted candy, there is a wariness of taking food items from unknown people;

2 - It is good business for retailers to participate in neighborhood/community building activities.

 
They started doing it around here when the pins in the apples started showing up. I am not in NYC,

but AM in NY state, but I don't think it's a regional thing, or even a New York City thing, other than the fact that larger towns/cities have the malls and the resources to host this type of thing.

It's safer for the kids, especially if they don't live in a particularly safe neighborhood themselves. That is if gas-station-guy isn't at the mall tonight...

 
In our city, the larges Mall encourages children to come and trick or treat at the stores

this year, they are thowing a party for the kids in one of the courts, a good way to get the parents in to shop while the kids are over doing it with candy and soda provided.

 
We've seen it everywhere we've lived. (Both coasts and in the middle)

I remember the malls started doing it in the midwest in the late 70s.

As we were running errands today we saw kids all over the place, in costume, getting lots of good candy.

 
Is this why there are no kids here yet?

I stayed home to give out candy. Bought a pile of it thinking I'd get lots of kids given it's Saturday. I saw kids out playing till dusk, so I know there are some around. Back in my day (geez, how old lady does that make me sound?) I'd be getting my costume on so that already had me wondering. It's been dark for a little while now (6:40pm), the decorations are out and lit so clearly the open for candy sign is out -- where the heck are the kids?

 
Maria, we only got 4 kids tonight at the house.

Usually we get a lot of out of the area visitors, but not tonight.

 
Statistically there are fewer and fewer children going out Trick or Treating. This year there's

the added worry of H1N1. There have been adds on the radio and TV suggesting families restrict their home visits and use hand sanitizer between each home. That would certainly take the fun out of the experience.

 
A new Halloween perspective...We have less than a dozen on our street anymore but last night we took

our usual walk through a ritzy area within blocks of us, there were over 100 children and adults going house to house and cars everywhere. We couldn't help but see some adults were driving children into this area purposely to do their bagging of Halloween candy. We couldn't believe what we were seeing.

We won't be taking walks on Halloween night again.

 
I'm not sure which part of that drives me more crazy: the chauffered trick-or-treaters, or the whole

concept of driving to another, ritzier neighborhood. Unbelievable!

 
I'm not sure about where you are, but here a lot of families who live where it would be unsafe

to be out after dark bring their kids to safer neighborhoods for trick-or-treating.

 
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