Its hard to pick out what is “normal”  Hollywood Blvd weirdness vs regular stuff on Halloween.  A few more in costumes and begging to be photographed videoed for free is probably the only difference. Its sort of Halloween Light compared to the insanity that is WeHo but it is subway easy and still festive enough.  His original blog post HERE.

In the past I’ve visited Lombardi Ranch in Saugus, Pierce College’s Halloween Harvest Festival, the Calabasas Pumpkin Festival, and even a lovely farm in Ventura County. All of these places had marvelous pumpkin patches, but the most sincere? Hard to say.

This year, I stuck closer to home and checked out Forneris Farms in Mission Hills. The pumpkins there were okay, but what they really have going for them is their fantastic corn maze. You can see an aerial view of it on their website and it’s pretty impressive. It’s large, family friendly and has an optional scavenger hunt. If I didn’t have a navigator, I’d still be wandering around the stalks of corn. While most of the pumpkin patches and farms that are still open close tomorrow, the corn maze at Forneris Farms is open through November 7th.

What are your favorite local pumpkin patches to visit? It doesn’t hurt to start planning for next year!

As the end of October approaches, we’re hotly anticipating that time when the heady aroma of smashed jackolanterns will once more waft through the air. So check in with us over the next week and a half as we bring you a variety of perspectives on navigating Halloween in Los Angeles – from LA’s spookiest places, to ghostly events, to more Lizard People coverage than you ever thought you’d need (and believe me, you do actually need it). Bookmark this post, because I’ll be keeping an archive of all our Halloween posts. And please comment below and let us know about your favorite scary sights, haunted houses and local Halloween festivities!

The Creepy Beneath Our Feet:  Kevin’s ongoing expose on the Secret Lives of Lizard People (and possibly the greatest run of posts this site has ever known)

LA’s Lizard People

The Patron Saint of the Lizard People

The City with Scaly Shoulders

Lizard People and the Bigger Picture

Passages to the Underworld

Lizards in Disguise

The Real (and Not Actually Creepy Thing

And because all good things must, sadly, end, the Wrap-Up.

Other, less lizard-oriented Halloween posts:

Navigating street closures at the West Hollywood Costume Carnival

Seriously Corny

Hide Your Silly String Tonight

Halloween Wardrobe Mal-Function

Sunshine Gothic

Spend Halloween Weekend with Nick 13 and TIGER ARMY!

Tiger Army shows are always awesome, and their Halloween shows are Legendary.
They’ll be at The Grove in Anaheim, on October 30th with Jack Grisham & The West Coast Dukes and Throw Rag
and on Halloween October 31st with Mad Sin and Hillbilly Casino.

Not to be Missed!

I have Four Pairs of Tickets to each show to Give Away! And a surprise Extra Pair for one of the nights! Ooooo…Bonus! Which night? Well, you don’t know, do you? Is it a Trick, or is it a Treat?

To enter the contest leave a comment on this post, and make sure to let me know what night you want to go. If either night is fine, let me know that. (That’s a good way to get an edge in the contest, I’m not gonna lie.) Winners will be selected randomly, or perhaps capriciously. It amounts to the same thing.

Oh, and no one will be getting tickets to both nights,  so don’t ask. Seriously.

Have Fun and Good Luck.

Tiger Army Never Die!

Halloween. Celebrated with free carnivals for kids at all Los Angeles City Recreations and Parks Department Playgrounds.

The year was 1961.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Fantasma De La Opera

Pieces for sale will include everything ranging from complete “merry peasant” and “medieval courtier” costumes to individual pieces such as capes, hats, shoes and fans. Highlights of the collection include a number of “diva dresses,” stunning hand-crafted gowns worn by LA Opera’s leading ladies including Carol Vaness (La Traviata, Don Giovanni, The Merry Widow and La Rondine), Jennifer Larmore (L’Italiana in Algeri), Maria Ewing (Fedora), Verónica Villarroel (Idomeneo) and Karita Mattila (Jenufa), as well as costumes worn by superstar tenor Plácido Domingo (Un Ballo in Maschera and Idomeneo). From what I hear, there is only one latex Fly costume so get in line early if you want to nab that one!

Prices will range from $10 for accessories to $20 for hats and masks, complete costumes from $150 all the way up to $5,000 for couture pieces. Cash, check and credit cards are all accepted.

LA Opera is the fourth largest opera company in the United States. The Company’s Costume Shop is staffed by dozens of highly skilled employees, including master tailors, cutter/drapers, seamsters and craftspersons, who create hundreds of costumes by hand every year for principal artists, choristers, dancers and supernumeraries appearing in LA Opera productions at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Sturdily constructed to last and often highly detailed, the costumes are built to fit singers of every size, from robust Wagnerians to petite Mozartians.

The costume sale will be held in the parking lot of LA Opera’s Costume Shop at 330 South Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Parking is available on the street, and there is secured pay parking in the Little Tokyo Galleria parking structure at 333 S. Alameda Street, directly across the street from the Costume Shop.

Happy hunting!

The costumes last night were fun and creative. We had two gals from “Mad Men,” Mr. and Mrs. Peanut, the Tooth Fairy, a 6 foot-plus leprechaun, a ballerina, a Red State redneck, a Wall Street banker, an archeologist, a nerd, a fisherman, a sushi chef, Joan Jett, Pam Grier, and even Bill Lumbergh from “Office Space.”  But no Sarah Palin?  What are the odds?  If ever someone was both ubiquitous in the popular culture for the moment, and easy to caricature, surely it is Sarah Palin.  Tina Fey even showed us how it’s done.  And, our party even had one woman who, if she puts on glasses, looks just like Sarah Palin. 

Maybe I should have gone as Sarah Palin.

UPDATE: The Huffington Post has a hilarious slideshow of Sarah Palin-costumed Halloween goers here.

The leftover goodies that went unclaimed at my house.

Is it just me or were the Trick or Treaters way down this year?  My street has always been a hit or miss so it is hard to tell by our traffic.  I took my youngest out for his last year of trick or treating and we ventured off the street as legend has it one of the streets above us does “only big candy bars”.  Even off the street for the most part it was lighter traffic than usual.

It was scary seeing the other neighborhoods around me.  Barely 1 in 4 homes were handing anything out.  Even fewer homes were decorated for the day with mazes, haunted houses or just great yard art.  Both a big departure from years past.

While I was pondering what happened I noticed on my facebook feed that a metblog writer in New Orleans, Daneeta Loretta had run a post with a similar observation there titled “Silent Night, Hallow Night”.  I guess the economy freak out is much bigger than I thought, certainly much deeper than the signs I see around my little corner of LA.

I heard from my friend Jeff  who turns his house into a “haunted house” and he had over 600 kids visit this year.  My daughter spent hours in line in Old Pas for a Haunted House there.  Old Town Monrovia was packed with kids for their afterschool party that included trick-or-treating.  Did everyone shift from door-to-door in favor of those activities?

How was your  Trick or Treater traffic?  What was your take on the shift in traffic?

(The pic is by me, trusty phone cam, and this year we gave pretzels and I am so glad as I wouldn’t want it to be that much candy left in the house to tempt me).

Halloween was serious business. There was no time for slutty pirates or hooker librarians. And jack-o-lanterns were carved without Presidential candidates or slogans.

It was Halloween at USC. The year was 1890.

Photo from USC Digital Archives

click for a larger view of the invitation

A favorite the last few years in my ‘hood has been the Halloween Maze put up by the folks on Foothill Blvd.  With the invitation being plastered all over town I guess the secret is out and will let all of LA in on the not so secret maze.  It is open for viewing most every night this week, but to actually see it in person you need to be there Halloween night from dark until it closes at 9:30PM.  Have fun and watch for my kidlets there-again!  (Google Map Link provided for your ease of locating)

Pic of the invite done by me with the trust phone cam.