If you were a kid in the New York City of the 1970s, Halloween probably resembled this.
Your mom or dad bought you your costume in a store, and it came with a mask held to your head by a rubber band.
Maybe you were the Bionic Woman, or a character from Planet of the Apes, or someone from Star Wars. Or you dressed up as a more classic Halloween character, like Batman or Cinderella or a witch or a skeleton.
You didn’t go to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village because you had never heard of it. You went trick or treating in your building or on your block after school, and most likely, no adult went with you.
Afterward, your parents probably took some of your candy stash because they didn’t want you to go crazy and eat it all at once. But you did get to eat it, slowly, over the next week or two.
Even though this was the bad old New York of the 1970s, no one was too worried about Halloween candy contaminated with poison or razor blades.
If you were born too early or too late to experience Halloween 1970s style, you can get a sense of it through some wonderful photos taken that decade by street photographer Larry Racioppo.
Racioppo’s Halloween images are available for viewing via the New York Public Library’s Digital Collection. A few examples are in this post.
I’m not sure where we are in the city, though the photo at right shows a war memorial that appears to be put up by the 12th Street block association…though it’s hard to read.
These black and whites capture a moment in time when many parts of New York were rundown and neglected. But that couldn’t stop kids from savoring the thrill of dressing up on Halloween.
Racioppo’s work captures other scenes of New York, and he even put out a book of his Halloween photos in 1980, available on Amazon as well as through his own site.
All photos © Larry Racioppo
Ephemeral New York 