Photo by me from Metroblogging L.A., reminding everyone that silly string is banned in Hollywood from midnight, October 31 to noon, November 1. Interesting conversation going on there, from grumbling about the poorly designed sign to the effectiveness of the law.
San Francisco’s Castro District has cancelled its infamous Halloween celebration after years of rising violence, including stabbings, shootings, and last year, one guy wandering the streets with a real live chainsaw. As a result, the website “Home for Halloween” provides alternatives, but strongly urges SF residents to just stay in for the evening.
L.A. Times columnist Sandy Banks explains that Halloween “feels like a nightmare-in-the-making, in a class by itself as a holiday ripe for kiddie calamities and parental stress.”
There’s an actual War on Halloween in our country, which is being driven by both ends of a perceived spectrum: Fundamentalists “who think All Hallows Eve is Satan’s annual pledge drive” as well as some witches who are offended by their depiction as pointy nosed freaks “that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion.”
But not everyone is a Halloween Scrooge: First Baptist church in Hendersonville, TN of all places, has opted to cancel midweek services so that its ministry could stay home and hand out candy… with messages on it: “We’ll have tracts that talk about how they can have a relationship with Jesus.”
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Why does the LA Times hate Halloween? Do they want the city to be boring so they don’t have to go out and cover it? Or are they too busy interviewing yet another actress about her favorite day spa?
Adult Christianity has a good run down too.