Downtown neighborhoods come to life on Halloween

by Sandra Miller
Beacon Hill Times/Back Bay Sun

Who needs Salem, what with its violence and throngs of tourists and bar scene? Let the college kids get drunk there. Little kids dressed as Ninjas and Star Wars characters and princesses and super heroes roamed the Hill and the Back Bay for their trick-or-treating thrills. More importantly, the neighborhoods get one last block party before the winter closes doors, and people go into hibernation mode.
Halloween wasn’t always drawing the families around here. Longtime residents recall years ago, when it was literally a ghost town for trick-or-treaters.
Former Marlborough Street and Beacon Hill resident Julie Jones recalled the 1980s, even to the mid-90s, since she lived on the Hill in 1982, and Back Bay in 1996, she has watched the holiday change. Of the 1980s, she said, “It was quiet, like a treasure hunt to find homes giving out candy. There wasn’t very much action.”
In the Back Bay, there was the Clarendon Street Playground and about 20 addresses listed as candy stops, plus a hayride. Beacon Hill was a lot quieter.
Actually, she and others noted that life on the Hill was a little scary in other ways, too, citing muggings and other suspicious characters that had many frightened to venture out at night. “It was dangerous and creepy,” she said.
But more families are moving to the city, as part of the downtown’s new attractiveness to young professionals, who, in turn, are choosing not to leave town when they begin having families. College students have been blamed for many things, but one thing they have brought is a safer neighborhood, many residents say.
Jones has watched the demographics shift. Over the years, when she opened her doors to trick-or-treaters, she’d watch the same girls come by, growing from toddlers to junior high students, and then high schoolers coming with their boyfriends.
You see people of all ages with kids, or their dogs, looking to reconnect with familiar faces. It’s yet another reminder that these neighborhoods are a tight unit of people looking out for one another and their kids, and not the typical Boston neighborhood of people too anxious or busy to get to know the person next door.
Halloween night begins at 4 p.m., with the little kids roaming the streets. By 6 or 7 p.m., mobs of kids and their families flood the doorways along the sections of Marlborough Street closed to traffic, and navigate tiny Beacon Hill streets. Neighbors run into friends they haven’t seen for awhile, catching up with each other in a place different from the schoolyard or playdates. Former residents visit to catch up with old friends. By eight o’clock, you start noticing some college kids poking around curiously, warming up for their revels elsewhere, and by 9 p.m., all is quiet.
The list of safe houses, as handed out by the Friends of the Clarendon Street Playground, as part of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, listed 22 Marlborough Street addresses, from 74 to 322 Marlborough, three on Commonwealth Avenue, and four others, on Clarendon, Dartmouth and Exeter. That didn’t stop others who didn’t submit their addresses on time to open up their doors and set out a candy bowl, either attended or on the honor system, watched by glowing pumpkins.
Several residents opened their doors and invited guests into the hallway for a glass of wine or cider. Neighbors gathered on stoops, wine glasses in hand, to socialize with each other and with families that stopped by. You don’t see this in places like Halloween Central over in Salem, or in surrounding communities. You don’t see regular-size candy bars handed out in too many spots, as you do here.
Tiny cobblestoned Acorn Street was wall-to-wall with costumed tykes and their families.
Edwin Prien and Dain Waters of 1 Acorn St. reported going through 10 huge bags of BJ’s candy. “It was slow in the beginning,” said Waters, who reported children’s costumes this year were more creative than ever. “There’s been more Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz and less Harry Potter,” Waters added.
“We get an overwhelming number of adorable kids,” said Debb Diggins of 12 Acorn St. Her dad, Con Coleman, came over to help her out, and for the excitement, he said, since they don’t get many kids where he lives on Commonwealth Avenue.
“It’s so much fun, year after year,” said James Houghton, who with Connie Coburn of 4 Acorn Street gave out bags and bags of candy. “It’s the highlight of the year.”
Lines formed to enter a Chestnut Street courtyard, where Al Holman and his brother-in-law took advantage of the gothic ivy-covered theme and camped it up with flying ghosts, a 3-D scary face, a witch, coffins and cobwebs. Dozens of other Beacon Hill doorways just needed a few touches to enhance the natural spookiness of webbed archways and ironwork grills. Halloween is a natural here.
Will Norse, who formerly lived on Marlborough Street before moving to Coolidge Corner, came to visit his friends on Beacon Hill who alternated with their own bash and decorating their stoop with a talking skeleton in a top hat and other spooky details. “It started out small, and it keeps growing,” he said. “It’s a native New England holiday. I had a friend from San Diego fly in for it. They don’t get it there.”
Norse noted since families have begun settling along the Hill, they are committed to making this a family community. Plus, he noted, “They’re staying in apartments that are far too small, so they look for any opportunity to roam the neighborhood.”
Jones actually traveled all the way from her new home in Jamaica so her now college-age son could experience Halloween on the hill again.
“It’s like Disney World now. It’s little scenarios that are being created in the streets, on doorsteps, and in hallways. Sometimes they’re cheerful, sometimes dark. Disney would give its right hand to have this,” she said.