Streakers and Sluts: Halloween in Los Angeles
Gentle reader,
Most holidays seem to have a spiritual home. Anyone who’s walked past Liberty of London in December knows that London owns Christmas, probably due to our concept of Yuletide having been entirely invented by Charles Dickens. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, seems very Eastern Seaboard because of the changing leaves and pilgrims, neither of which are plentiful in Southern California. Mardi Gras is observed in drastically different ways in three places around the world: in New Orleans it’s about partying; in Sydney it’s about the gays; in Rio it’s all about sex. On second thought, maybe those don’t sound that different after all.
Me back in the day.
It’s hard to say for certain what makes Halloween the quintessential Los Angeles holiday but it probably has a lot to do with the fact that most Angelinos came here to be somebody else.