What’s on your mind this Halloween?
What are the creative and most memorable costumes that you are seeing?
What else are you tracking in the news today?
We are going to enjoy today to it’s fullest here in Boystown, where Halloween is often called “Gay Christmas” because of the amount of prep time, decorations, and excitement it brings. Some people we know make Halloween all about gore and scary things, but we like it for the fun, brightly colored, and pop culture costumes. Here’s a running list of the costumes we’ve seen out and about so far, on actual people, not just in the stores. It will be interesting to see what people REALLY wore and what statements they REALLY wanted to make today instead of what the retailers thought they’d do or the costume makers predicted:
* Paul Bunyon (lumberjack look) with Babe the Blue Ox around his neck (Beanie Baby)
* NeNe and Kim from the Real Housewives Atlanta (and surprisingly enough, they were women)
* Mortal Kombat fighters (being Boystown, they were wearing loincloths too)
* Someone who we thought was dressed like a zombie, but was just old and looked really tired
* The Danny Devito Victorian goth Penguin from Batman Returns
* Brazilian soccer goalie (so far, the closest thing we’ve seen to anything connected to the Olympics here…though a bar on Belmont does have a graveyard scene painted on its windows, where “R.I.P. Chicago Olympics 1896-2016″ is the featured tombstone”
* Several female Robins and a few Batmen…also a few guys who buy those puffed up fake muscle superhero getups we think are ugly and stupid. If you are going to spend $50 on a costume…and those fugly things are expensive…there are so many more creative things you can do than wear fake muscles.
* An odd group of little kids that had at first what we thought was Elvis (pompadour, leather jacket, blue jeans, white shirt), but we couldn’t figure out what he was holding knives, then the parent said he was “Wolverine”. With him in the group was another little boy who we think was supposed to be Hitler: he had a tiny mustache, a tan coat, had his hair slicked to the side, and had a suit on…like Hitler in formal speech dress. There MUST be some kind of detective this kid was supposed to be, like Inspector Clouseau maybe. Because “Lil’ Hitler” is just so strange and wrong (and as a group costume, coupled with Lil’ Idi Amin, Lil’ Stalin, Lil’ Ayatollah Khomeini, Lil’ Mao, it would have been much worse…like what we’d imagine a White House children’s costume party would look like under the direction of Anita Dunn)
* Here’s an exchange we overheard involving some rowdies from the Center on Halsted Gang, who of course wore no costumes, but just came out in full force last night to terrorize Boystown like they always do (taking the trains up from the Southside, hanging out at the Center all day, then when it closes raising Hell and harassing people who actually live in the neighborhood…thanks a lot, Center on Halsted).
Gang Member (to a guy with an elaborate wig on): Hey, what on your head?
Guy: Birds
Gang Member: Huh?
Guy: Birds. Like in the movie “The Birds” (he said, wearing a Don Draper suit, with a headpiece of various little birds held up on piano wire zooming around him, Tippi Hedron-style).
Gang Member: Take it off and gimme it. My friend here wants to wear it.
Guy: No. Tell your friend she can’t demand everything she wants. She’s not Michelle Obama.
Oh, snap! (and we swear we don’t know this guy, have never met him before, and have no idea who he is…but that made us smile all night. The Center on Halsted Gang just howled and acted as loud and stupid as they do every night, upset they couldn’t bully someone into taking off their costume and handing it over to them. And, of course, yet again, the only cop we saw all night was the one dressed in skin tight pants and fitted shirt who was clearly not “on the job”, but may have, by the quality of the duds, been an off-duty stripper).
*At one point in the night, at Roscoe’s, a guy dressed up as a flasher had to be dragged down from a platform by a bouncer dressed up as Droopy the Dog, a tight-pants wearing construction worker, and an angry lesbian manager (whose costume, like our current First Lady’s, is just a perpetual skowl). We have no idea what the guy did to upset them all (and he had a silver speedo on, so it’s not like he was actually flashing anyone), but it took them a ridiculous amount of time to bounce him. Like trying to administer a “time out” to a stubborn five year old. If it was our club, we’d have had that clown on his ass on the street lickety split.
* A woman named Monica who we know from the neighborhood dressed up as MeDoucha…and had tampons and other feminine products made into a wig…which appalled everyone until we spotted someone we thought was Mrs. Garrett from Facts of Life wearing bloody tampons all over a pink dress, which made no sense, and then we realized it was a drag queen dressed as “Flo” from Alice, but instead had a nametag that said “Flow” on it. Suddenly, Monica, with her clean, unused, unbloodied products on her head didn’t seem all that bad, all things considered
* An incredibly drunk Peter Pan with a big belly, squeezed into American Apparel lime green tights, being babysat by a Wendy who looked so good she could have stepped off a theatrical stage
* Woody from Toy Story done Boystown style…no shirt, glitter cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and cowboy briefs
* Sexy Freddy Krueger (male version), with belly shirt…like the sexy Freddys and sexy Jasons we’ve seen in costume shops for women. Which is interesting because straight women take male characters and make them “sexy” like this, including historical figures like Abraham “Babebraham” Lincoln, but we don’t typically see straight guys take female characters and make them male or take male characters and make them “sexy”. But gay guys do just that. Straight guys seem to go for “funny” costumes, while gay guys and straight women shoot for “sexy”. Always interesting to us.
* An adult actually had bad taste enough to dress up as “sexy Hitler”, believe it or not. He had blue school boy shorts and a blue boarding school jacket, with black boots, and very authentic looking Nazi armbands…little mustache and slicked over hair to boot. And there was no doubt who this was supposed to be, unlike the “Lil’ Hitler” costume mentioned earlier that was most likely something else (just so obscure it looked like “Lil’ Hitler”). Has WWII and the Holocaust been so long ago at this point that guys in the 21-25 range think “sexy Hitler” is a good idea? It reminded us of Sebastian’s ex, David, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and who insisted on dressing up as a crucified, bloody Jesus in 2004 because he thought Passion of the Christ Jesus would be a good costume (he had long hair, and so he would have been a good Tarzan, but David just HAD to be bloody Jesus…and it made everyone uncomfortable all night). Maybe “sexy Hitler” has autism too. Something is sure wrong with him.
* Two different people were dressed as the brown, boxy monster on cups at 7/11. We have no idea what this thing is, but see it everywhere.
* There was a Dalai Lama, also at Roscoe’s, wearning a gold g-string under his robes (which he’d lift up to expose said g-string). We’ve actually met the real Dalai Lama when he visited Millennium Park in Chicago and can assure you he really doesn’t do that.
* A group of 80s-styled Camp Crystal Lake camp counselors
* Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly from Back to the Future (“Is that a Coast Guard vest? Are you in the Coast Guard?”)
* Generic 80s aerobics instuctors, 80s yuppies etc. — which makes it official, where people used to dress up in 70s clothes to be retro and goofy, the 21-25 year olds are doing the same thing with the 80s now
* Mummy’s lament: one bartender we know, who has Egyptian heiroglyphs tattooed on his arms, was upset he spent days dying “three football fields of cheese cloth” with tea, and then spent hours wrapping himself in the bandages and painting his face to look like a skull, but “nobody recognizes me” so he didn’t feel his costume was successful
* Lots of sailors and people dressed as chefs this year
* Halloween, to many in Boystown, is just an annual excuse to go outside in their underwear
* Crocodile Hunter, with a cute plush croc wrapped around his body…he wore tight khaki shorts, tight shirt, and Aussie hat with tan outdoorsy boots
* Ed Hardy shits are a great costume to wear…if you want to be a total douche for Halloween, or any random Friday
* Adam Lambert from American Idol
* Kilts, lumberjacks, prisoners — lots of homemade costumes that looked like people didn’t want to spend money and just used what they had around the house (which is great…but more imagination would have been great…you can take things around the house and make really cool stuff if you try…or you could just wear plaid and a knit hat and draw a fake beard with magic marker and be a lumberjack)
* Very few people got excited when “Thriller” was played the several times we heard it last night. In the past, the room would ERUPT in cheers when Thriller came on, and a large number would do the moves. Last night, not so much. We didn’t spot a single Michael out either. Maybe they are saving it all for tonight.
* Spotted the first Latino drag Wonder Woman of the season last night.
* “Gay.com Serial Killers” was one of the, but not THE, weirdest costumes we spotted: white sleeveless tanks with blood and holes in them, with Gay.com stamped on the back. We think this meant they went out to meet people from Gay.com and then were killed, but it might mean they were killers from Gay.com who had their victims’ blood on them. Either way, weird, and once again noting that some people go the gore route with Halloween, some go the sexy route, and some go for laughs and smiles.
* One of our favorites last night was “Queen of the Night” Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard. Because we love Whitney and love that movie, even if we try to forget Kevin Costner’s in it.
* An older man with White Hair was dressed as Karl Lagerfeld, which we at first wanted to call Yyves St. Laurent, but that’s not right. It’s the guy with the white ponytail and omnipresent sunglasses in the fashion world. The thing is, this same guy looks like this on his own almost every day, just without the sunglasses, so it’s not much of a stretch of a costume.
* Gomez & Morticia Addams costumes made us think how much fun an “Adams Family” costume would be as a group…John, Abigail, John Quincy, Wednesday, and Uncle Fester. That would be a riot…and most of those would be great for Fourth of July or Tea Parties, too.
* One sad Amy Winehouse standing in a corner by herself
* One guy had a blue underarmor baseball shirt on with nametags all over it with men’s names on them: ”Ethan”, “David”, “Mark”, etc. Who knows what he was…another serial killer…speed dating…Match.com? It was cheap, but also effective in getting him attention, because we just kept wondering who he was, so kind of a great costume idea if you don’t want to spend a lot of money and still want people to notice you.
* Another good idea was a bunch of grapes, like the old Fruit of the Loom commercials. A guy just had a purple bodysuit and then attached small purple balloons to it…and every place he went people laughed and smiled and he got free drinks because it was hard for him to get up to the bar to order. That makes any costume a winner in our books.
* Most random costume of the night: Richard Nixon Holding A Shark. Literally, it was a woman in a Richard Nixon mask (the only political mask we’ve seen so far out and about), regular clothes, holding a plush Great White shark doll. Nothing deeper behind it — and we did ask her — “Nope, just Nixon with a shark”.
* One “Scream” masked killer…lots of generic witches…only one Lady GaGa spotted so far (the one dressed in a coat made of Kermits)…a David Bowie with red hair (that at first we thought was another Adam Lambert)…a Northwestern University football player (who may have, at one point, actually BEEN an NU football player…and at any rate looked great in the purple jersey and tight white pants)
* Nerds: saw several of these, just different variations on the pocket protector, glasses, and plaid theme
* Strippers dressed as baseball players
* Shirtless guy with a windsor-knotted tie tattooed down his chest (which makes everyday a costumed Halloween)
* At the end of the night, we ended up at Lucky Horseshoe (because Panda was with us and he’s drawn there like a moth to its flame or, ironically, a panda to strippers). Horseshoe is either the most interesting or most depressing bar in Boystown, depending on what you want to get out of it. We think it’s fascinating as a character study of the folks hanging out there and, unlike the other bars in Boystown, it’s a no-attitude place with nobody trying to impress anyone else. They’re just free to be themselves, for better or worse. We spotted a group of women dressed up like flappers from the 20s looking sad and drunk in one corner…and a bunch of guys dressed up like 50s women on the go in another part having a great time…and in another corner were guys dressed like they just stepped out of Studio 54 at its height. So, it felt a little like being in purgatory, with all these people from different decades sitting around, trapped in different moods, while baseball players randomly stripped and ESPN was on all the TVs.
