Call me the Halloween Grinch

Let’s talk about Halloween in New York City. The good, the okay, and the parts that are so bad we don’t even want to remember they happened. I know there are many people who choose not to participate in or care about Halloween festivities at all, but I do because I suffer from a bad case of FOMO, so I am here to give you an incredibly honest review. 

First, the costume search. Your costume has to be niche, but not so specific that it is unrecognizable. You absolutely cannot wear a basic costume, and you feel like you have to have more skin showing than you are comfortable with, sadly. 

At NYU especially, I feel there’s already some sort of pressure to dress well, or try to have some sense of “fashion.” It seems to be an unspoken rule that sweatpants are not allowed here; only jeans, boots, skirts, leather jackets – you get the idea. So, imagine the culture when it comes to Halloween! Not only do you have to come up with the most creative costume, but it also has to be the perfect balance of fashionable, cool, and identifiable.

To add to the pressure, when you open TikTok, all you will see is endless amounts of slideshows: Best Costumes for Blondes, Best Costumes for Duos, Best Costumes for groups of four – the list goes on and on. 

Me and my roommates decided to abandon all of the TikTok ideas we saw, and go with the super niche route, which, of course, ended up being one of the just “okay” parts of Halloween. We decided to dress as Motley Crue. You might be asking, who is that? Which, for the record, is what just about every single person we ran into also asked. They are a 1980s heavy metal band, a group of four who wore aggressive platform boots, teased hair, and lots of chains and eyeliner, by the way. But, we weren't going to explain that to every person we encountered. So, when we simply said “a band,” people either reacted with “You killed it!!” or, “Oh,” with an awkward smile. So, with our costumes that we had artfully crafted, buying all sorts of tight leather and studded fishnets (totally out of our comfort zone), we fell into the “too specific that people don’t understand it” category. 

Another aspect of New York City that makes Halloween so stressful is the money. Not only is it already expensive to breathe and eat in this city, but then we are expected to spend MORE on a costume that we will likely wear for five hours. You can wear something you already have in your closet, but if you do not buy every accessory for the character you choose to play and have the exact outfit they were wearing, you may just fall right back into the “not memorable” costume category. So, for Halloween, spend every last penny in your bank account, but, of course, do NOT forget to save some for the tickets. 

“Tickets,” you might ask??? Yes. You must, and it is absolutely required, spend hours on end everyday scrolling through countless TikToks, searching far and wide for where you will spend your Halloween. Not Tuesday, when the holiday actually is, but rather the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before it. Because once you reach a certain age, this holiday is no longer about who can collect the most candy, but instead about who looks the coolest, which parties are the best, and who had the funniest drunken encounter. Sad, I know. 

So, if you are choosing to do Halloween on a budget like me and my roommates, you will choose to go to a Frat party (which are free!). Mistake. In your tight leather costume and face full of decorative makeup, you must now enter the sweatiest, most crowded apartment, where you can’t make out anyone’s faces – or costumes. So after all that money you spent perfecting your super unique costume, no one can see it!!! 

If you decide to go the other route, and go to a club or bar, you cannot just walk in. You have to buy a ticket to the event. Tickets are normally anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars, so after you spend all that money buying tickets for all three days of Halloweekend, you then have to wait in a line, and enter yet another, dark, crowded, room, where, again, no one can see all the hard work you put into your costume, and you have to spend even MORE money if you choose to dabble in a drink. 

I said I would talk about the good and the bad of Halloween. I lied. For me, there really was no good in Halloween, well, other than taking off my suffocating leather pants at the end of the night. Call me the Grinch of Halloween, maybe I am a pessimist about this holiday, but Halloween in New York City is an overhyped, stress inducing, waste-of-money holiday. 

In an attempt to salvage my Halloween condemnation, I’m going to instead end this piece with my advice to myself – and maybe you too — if your feelings toward this adult dress-up game are anything like mine. 

My first advice is to not worry about what everyone else is doing. Though that sounds incredibly cheesy, it’s utterly true. When I compared my Halloween to everyone else’s, I felt, to put it plainly, like crap. Everyone else seemed to be having such a good time, going to crazy clubs and having exquisite costumes. Keyword there being seemed. Because honestly, my Instagram followers probably thought my Halloween seemed great too. But truly, we never know the backstory of someone’s post, and we all post the coolest parts of our lives (I think we can all admit this). Maybe my advice for next Halloween should be to lock my phone away, put it in a deep dark cave and not look at everyone else’s super-cool-awesome plans. 

My next advice is to not get overwhelmed by options – simplicity is relaxing sometimes. What I mean by this is that yes, there will be a million choices of where you can celebrate, but just pick one and stick with it instead of worrying about missing the next coolest thing. Make the most of whichever one you choose. Pick the costume you are comfortable in, not the high heels that pinch your toes all night. Do not succumb to the pressure coming from each direction, just enjoy yourself. Though that may be easier said than done, I am going to try to take my own advice next year to make Halloween in New York City a little more enjoyable than this one.