From Ragamuffins to Nurses to Buddy; A Round Up of Hoboken's Halloween Festivities

As a kid, About Town always had ideas for elaborate Halloween costumes that our Eastern European parents vetoed every time. They don't joke about scary things. They grew up terrified of Communist dictators, gypsies and roaming packs of wolves. Also they may or may not believe that Dracula is a real person.

So that killed a lot of the fun about Halloween, and we developed an ambivalence towards the holiday. We don't dress up as an adult, and we sort of don't see the point. But other people like it, and so we made sure to attend a few of the many Halloween events this weekend in Hoboken.

We didn't still didn't wear a costume though. We just wore our usual uniform of brown Sketcher sneakers, blue jeans, and one of the sweaters we bought in ten different earth-toned colors from the Gap.

We started Saturday morning by heading to Pier A Park for the second annual “Hobooken” 5k charity race organized by the Hoboken Elysianettes Running Society. Over 1000 runners braved the cold, wind and rain to run the race. Meanwhile About Town ate a bag full of cholesterol biscuits from McDonald's.

for the Hoboken Shelter. About Town chatted with Shelter director Jaclyn Cherubini, sipped a cup of hot chocolate courtesy of Midtown Authentic owner Rory Chadwick, and almost accidentally crushed the cardboard go-carts two runners had made for their Super Mario Bros. costume.

About Town started the next day, Sunday, by visiting the super scary house of horrors inside City Hall at 6pm. After seeing some gut-spilling there, we crossed the street to hit a party at Room 84 hosted by celebrity stylist and Hoboken native Eric Alt.

We mingled with Alt, who was dressed as a pimp complete with a cane, cigar, and Flava Flav's clock bling, and also singer Lori Michaels, celebrity photographer Rula Kanawati and stylist Miguel Rodriguez. Miguel, a stylist on the show Jerseyliscious, looked awesome as a Playboy bunny in drag.

About Town saw a Thor, a Batman, a Batgirl and a buff shirtless cowboy. We saw two versions of Wonder Woman, the second also wearing Hacksaw Duggan's beard, Lou Albano's pot belly and more back hair than George “the Animal” Steele. We saw a guy dressed as what would probably be termed a “hot cop,” and another guy who seemed to be channeling Ugandan strongman Idi Amin.

At one point three women who must have been fashion models walked in wearing basically their underwear. One of them toted a toy machine gun and had several lines of cursive script tattooed on her torso. They talked with Alt, posed for a couple of photos and crushed About Town's soul when they left after five minutes.

On Monday afternoon we walked along Washington Street and saw probably thousands of parents and kids trick-or-treating. It was a great sight that made us smile (see photos and ).

On the street we saw Councilwoman Jennifer Giattino, former council candidate Greg Lincoln and St. Patrick's parade organizer Helen Cunning, sitting with her mother Joan Cunning. Mother Cunning will give a talk on November 6 at the Hoboken Historical Museum about growing up in Willow Terrace.

We watched the ragamuffin parade, which featured lots of kids, plus Mayor Dawn Zimmer, Director of Health and Human Services Leo Pellegrini, Carmelo Garcia, Freeholder Anthony "Stick" Romano and Nurse-for-the-occasion Beth Mason.

After the parade we went to Texas Arizona for the first stop in a bar crawl organized by the Hoboken Happy Hour Group.

The group's organizers, Tiffany Shenman and Krysten Mack, got local bars (TA, the Village Pourhouse, The Shannon, 1 Republik and The Wicked Wolf) to offer specials and prizes to the over 200 people who had registered for the crawl. They also got some known entities to host: Albie and Chris Manzo (OMG! The Manzos!) and their roommate and Real Housewives of New Jersey castmate, Greg Bennett.

We chatted with both Manzos at the Pourhouse, including Chris, who nailed his Buddy Valastro costume. Albie told us he reads the Hoboken Patch and we talked to him about local politics. The strapping Bennett, dressed as a Power Ranger, kindly bought us a shot, and we all toasted the Manzos for celebrating their first year living in Hoboken. About Town then spent the rest of the hour standing next to the Manzo brothers and trying to attract any of the nearby women by showing them (it didn't work).

We didn't go on the rest of the bar crawl though, mostly because we had to go home and write this article. But it was a great Halloween in Hoboken. Kids of all ages must have had a lot of fun. Maybe next year we'll even wear a costume. We're thinking to wear Superman's tights under our Gap sweater – we've already got the Clark Kent half down pat.

Alan Skontra was a big dork who never went anywhere. Then he started writing the About Town column for Patch, and now he's everywhere. Have a hot tip on an event in Hoboken? Send an invitation, questions and comments too, to alanskontra@hotmail.com, and peep his tweets @alanskontra.