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November 02, 2004
Showing some skin
A fair number of visitors are searching for photos of Halloween in Isla Vista, and so I’ve decided to oblige. If you haven’t heard of this party, it takes place on Del Playa, the ocean-side strip running through the college town attached to the University of California at Santa Barbara. I attended for the first time last year as cultural “research” for the novel I’m writing; I returned this year for the spectacle and the excuse to stop in my beloved Santa Barbara. Bill and I pathetically dashed into a Ralph’s grocery store for the last remaining witch hat and princess tiara. The students’ costumes were a little, er, bolder as you can see in this shot of Bill:
It was a gentler, kinder Halloween I saw in IV, as it’s known, Sunday night. I’m told partiers had stormed the street the two previous nights, and that UCSB students had midterms the next day; police estimates had the crowd at 20,000. And Bill and I hit DP (Del Playa) at 11 p.m., far before peak. Police trotted by on horses wearing rock-proof shields, but curbside arrests were few and far between. Last year I saw semi-conscious girls pulled from the crowd on stretchers; this year I just saw a lot of skin:
Yes, Halloween in Isla Vista is a model of feminist empowerment. Garter belts were overwhelmingly popular, and the leading male costume was a doctor offering “free breast exams,” a joke that found its cleverest expression in the “Mammogram Man” with his own private booth. Angels, devils, pirates, cowgirls, maids: the common denominator was lingerie. Frederick’s of Hollywood must be facing a serious stock shortage. The best line of the night came from one young man who, surveying the menagerie, shouted: “I just realized I haven’t seen any strippers this year.”
I’m all for body confidence. But ladies, if you’re going to mount a stage in your front yard and stand there in a G-string, you lose some leverage to cry foul when the crowd expects you to deliver:
This theatrical production brought some rather anatomically precise chants. But no one threw beer cans when the girls balked, as I’d seen last year. And in the park, a solid 12 or 15 people showed up for a sober screening of “Ghostbusters,” heeding this sign:
In short, it was all good, not-so-clean, but strangely innocent fun. Back at our car on the outskirts of IV, Bill and I removed our hat and tiara, shrugged at the crazy kids, and felt very, very old.
Posted by Rachel at November 2, 2004 08:15 PM
