Fall brings out the best of Hyde Park. The giant pecan trees shading the wide avenues are heavy with pecans that have started to fall. You’ll see the occasional neighbor out for a walk collecting pecans for fall baking. The weather finally cools off enough for everyone to get out and visit with their neighbors and enjoy their porches or grill in their backyards.
This is about the time the neighborhood events get underway, too. The neighborhood volunteers start planning for the Fire Station Festival at the end of October and the Homes Tour in November.
Volunteering to plan these events has been a rewarding way to meet neighbors, make friends, and give back to the community we feel so connected to.
Halloween-themed cookies start appearing in Quacks, sugar cookies with colorful icing. Quacks is an incredible participant in the community; they bring huge boxes of cookies for the kids at the Fire Station Festival to decorate and take home. Their commitment to the Fire Station Festival is remarkable. They send staff, set up three large tables, and patiently watch the kids decorate with little plastic bags of frosting that end up all over the costumes and the sticky fingers and hair. Our team has always ordered Thanksgiving pies from Quacks for our clients to give back to them and thank them for their commitment to the community.
For Hyde Park, the Fire Station Festival is the kickoff of the Halloween season. Everybody gets to bring the costumes out and use them for more than just Halloween evening. There’s a costume contest. It helps everyone savor the Halloween spirit.
Back in the 1970s, Dorothy Rickter, the “Mayor of Hyde Park,” inadvertently started the Fire Station Festival. The city proposed the closing of firehouse engine #9, so she led a children's march with bicycles and children and invited the TV station to cover the event. Her efforts were successful, and the neighborhood has celebrated the event every year since then. Some neighborhoods have Fourth of July parades, and Hyde Park has a Halloween parade in full costume, led by the firetruck.
The whole neighborhood meets at Shipe Park buzzing with anticipation, dressed in costume, and the firetruck leads on a parade from Shipe Park to the fire station. It is a late afternoon event; increasingly, it can be a little warm, which makes the face-painting lines a little surprising. There’s a costume contest for the kids and families with several categories, including best individual costumes and best family costumes. There is a photo booth, face painting, sometimes a clown, costumes of course and the cherished iced cookies from Quacks!!
Long before the Fire Station Festival at the end of October, the neighborhood starts decorating for Halloween. Almost every street in Hyde Park participates, but Avenue F and Avenue G are the epicenters of the celebrations. They are closed for Halloween night from 40th through 44th Street, with throngs of people in the streets.
The decorations start appearing the first week in October. There’s a house with political satire decorations. It’s best to see that one during the day a few times so you can think about all of the jokes. This type of humor is baffling and impressive to me and not something I would be able to generate. There is a Dia De Los Muertos table on Speedway where we all bring photos of our loved ones or doggies from the past in the week or two before Halloween. There’s a house that gets turned into a haunted house with an awning that goes out to the street, creating an elaborate entrance.
Several homes have dance floors installed the day or two before Halloween in preparation for the disco they build in the front yard on Halloween. The neighborhood brass band Blowcommotion typically plays in different locations on Avenue F and G throughout the night and then there is sometimes one more brass band.
Dance floors are set up in the middle of the street, and brass bands play while neighbors visit with each other, wander around, and look at decorations and costumes. With the music, crowds, and celebration, it feels like a mini Mardi Gras! The celebration is limited to the streets in the eastern section of the historic district—unfortunately, the area of Hyde Park, north of 45th St., barely gets any trick-or-treaters.
We purchased our first house in the Hyde Park area north of 45th Street in 2000, and I couldn’t wait to get south of 45th to participate in the Halloween festivities. In 2014, we moved into the historic district. Our block still isn’t part of the mix; you have to be on Avenue G, but it’s closer, so we do get trick-or-treaters.
On Halloween night, the youngest children come out at around 5 o’clock. The older kids and parents start circulating around seven when it gets dark. Of course, there’s the house that always hands out hot toddies if it’s cold or margaritas if it’s warm for the grownups.
Then there is the house where they count the number of trick-or-treaters and chart attendance charting for the day of the week and the temperatures. If I’m not mistaken, in recent years, the number of trick-or-treaters has exceeded 1000 that house.
Then, just like that, by 9:30, 10 o’clock, the streets are completely quiet. The neighborhood goes to sleep and wakes up the next day, cleaning up the Halloween decorations and planning for the homes tour.
We are delighted to be your guides to Austin and Austin real estate!
Cheers,
Jen & the team
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