A rude amount of rain couldn’t ruin Dog Halloween on Sunday, as the annual Tompkins Square Park costumed-canines parade/competition went ahead as planned with dozens of mostly adorable, sometimes spooky very good boys and girls strutting their stuff by the river.
The parade, which isn’t really a parade anymore, was held again this year at the East River Amphitheater, which has proven to be an excellent venue for the event. There’s ample seating, which means that most spectators don’t clog up the “backstage” area, allowing more room for the contestants to run around and meet each other. And the slightly out of the way location means that there’s not that uncomfortable crowd crush that came to define the last couple of years in Tompkins Square Park.
The costumes showed the usual wide range of creativity, from simple store-bought garb (tacos, spiders, lobsters, "bad dog" prisoners, Bat Men and Wonder Women) to handmade pieces, and it's those elaborate group outfits that always steal the show. The grand prize winner(s) (bringing home a $500 Petco shopping spree) were two Yorkshire terriers as Snoopy and the Red Baron battling it out in the skies over Europe in a handmade apparatus.
The winners
Other crowd-pleasing solo outfits and themed groups included an Exorcist interpretation, several Climate Change crews, a goofy Ramen Noodle dog served in human-bone broth, a pair of Rainbow Fish, an immobile Between Two "Fur-ns" set, several Ruth Bader Ginsbergs, Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, and a couple of Runs but no DMCs. Jurassic Park, Stranger Things, Sesame Street, Star Wars, and the Wizard of Oz continue to inspire and, improbably, there were two different Midsommer trios who showed up as well.
Your move, Great Pupkin!
