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Halloween Revelers March in Parade
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


This year's installment of the rowdy Halloween parade in Greenwich Village mixed the traditional 
witches and ghosts with something perhaps even spookier -- costumes of crooked CEOs. 

"I stole your 401(k) money! How's that for scary?" said Jason Mietzel, of Park Slope,
 Brooklyn, who was dressed in a suit and tie and had streaks of fake blood streaming down his face. 


 
He was among thousands of costumed revelers who marched Thursday along Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, 
from Spring Street in the city's SoHo district about a mile north to 23rd Street. 

The parade has grown from a small house-to-house walk in 1973 to a spectacle billed as the nation's 
largest public celebration of Halloween. More than a million people now gather each year to watch it, 
organizers say. 

This year, spectators were lined up 10 deep on either side of the avenue as the marchers strutted 
and danced past -- drag queens on roller skates, astronauts, aliens, angels, devils and all manner 
of goblins. 

Fleming Terrell, of Waco, Texas, a student at Columbia University in New York, held a transparent 
umbrella over her head, draped her body in streamers of bubble wrap and declared herself a jellyfish. 

"I get a little carried away for Halloween, I guess," said Terrell, a first-timer at the Greenwich 
Village parade. "Some people think I'm a shower or a rainstorm, but I think the innards help. Don't you?" 

At some spots, the parade looked more like a rollicking, moving concert, with percussion bands marching 
up the avenue alongside vans that blared music from disco to classic rock. 

Police said at the conclusion of the three-hour parade that they had no arrests or reports of trouble. 
They declined to estimate the size of the crowd. 

This year's parade theme was "Play." The main organizer, Village Halloween Parade Inc., said the idea 
was to get the city to divert itself, if only briefly, from its fast pace and focus on the simple joy 
of recreation. 

Last year, for a parade held less than two months after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, 
the theme was a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

This year's parade featured some costumes that were extremely popular last Halloween, in the immediate 
aftermath of the terror strikes, including police officers, firefighters and soldiers. 

Holly Kim Wilson, of Long Beach Island, N.J., and Nina Bogin, of Kew Gardens, Queens, came decked out 
in patriotic paraphernalia -- red, white and blue hair ribbons, capes, hats and handheld American flags. 

"This has got to be the most chaotic parade in the world," Wilson said. "It's just a giant mass of insanity."