Journeys›Photograph

A Neighborhood Halloween on Belvedere Street

·San Francisco, California·#bay area#family#autumn#trick-or-treating#halloween
Several children in Halloween costumes, including vampires, a parrot, and a bee, stand indoors with glowing toys and treat bags.

Halloween started indoors with the costume scrum — a small Dracula in full cape and grey face paint rubbing at his eye, a toddler parrot with an orange felt beak, a bee, a girl in black tights holding a glowing wand. Getting everyone out the door took longer than the first three houses did.

We worked Belvedere Street in Cole Valley, the stretch between Parnassus and 17th, which shuts down to through traffic for the night, so the kids could bolt down front paths without anyone hovering. And bolt they did — one house had a bronze statue and a birdbath in the yard, and the girl came back up the walkway at a dead run, headband askew.

Some houses go all out here: tissue-paper ghosts strung overhead, a whole family answering the door in pirate costume. One porch had a line of carved pumpkins, three in a row with bats and crooked teeth, and enough kids queued up that it took a while.

Somewhere past the halfway point the girl in black sat down on a stone step with her orange bucket and started going through it, and that was more or less the end of the route.

A blurred child runs on a path past a house, garden, and a statue under a dark blue twilight sky.Three children in Halloween costumes stand outside a dark door next to a brick wall at night.Several people and children in costumes are on a tiled patio at night with colorful lights and hanging ghost decorations.A child sits on a step at night, holding an orange bucket; a brightly lit house and a person's silhouette are in the background.Silhouetted people and children are on a porch with several glowing carved pumpkins and a bright house entrance in the background.Children in costumes trick-or-treating at a house at night, with a man offering candy and carved pumpkins glowing.Children in costumes and adults gather near a brightly lit house entrance at night, with several carved pumpkins.Children and adults trick-or-treat at a house at night, with multiple lit jack-o'-lanterns on the porch.

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