Halloween is a Tuesday night this year. It may be raining, likely it will be cold, and almost certainly... Halloween will be spooky this year. Mayor Newsom is creating the perfect storm with his plan to replace entertainment with police and pull the plug on the party at the peak time of 11 pm. But there has never been a better time to come to the Castro to celebrate Halloween.

The Newsom Administration has consistently sided with NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) neighbor groups in matters where the public interest is at odds with with the convenience or values of a few. In Mayor Newsom's world: Car parking wins over park use and public space. Car drivers win over Muni riders. Future environmental effects are subjugated to immediate convenience. Street fairs and music festivals that entertain thousands, even cherished long-standing festivals like the North Beach Jazz Festival, can fall prey to the wishes of a half dozen cranky neighbors. Halloween is merely the most recent victim of this trend.

This year's spooky Halloween program was architected by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who is up for reelection this November in District Eight which includes the Castro. Dufty has been angling for years to kill the Halloween celebration, in order to appease NIMBY constituents who are annoyed by the annual pilgrimage of partiers. By crafting a deliberate disaster he hopes to pick up political points this November .... “See, I tried cancel it” and, ultimately succeed in his goal of killing the event next year.

If Halloween is the latest public event to bear the brunt of NIMBY wrath, it surely will not be the last. Dufty and Newsom are setting a frightening precedent that will put other public events, such as Folsom Street Fair or the annual Pride celebration, at risk. Ironically, Dufty regularly cites incidents that occurred at Pride in SF, and even other cities, as support for his campaign to end Halloween. In doing so, he is creating a model for NIMBYs who oppose street fairs and festivals. Does Dufty not realize that all public gatherings create noise and refuse and traffic and parking and crowd control issues? Haight Street Fair or Bay to Breakers have these same issues, and somewhere there is a group of NIMBYs in every neighborhood who want these events curtailed.

When cities focus energy on creating a fun and safe environment for public events, as New York does for its Greenwich Village Halloween, residents are treated to great commnity experiences. Unfortunately, San Franciscans may get the tricks without the treats this year from our city leaders. While Bevan Dufty sleeps and Gavin Newsom raises money in LA or NY (or where ever he is off to next week), we will head out to enjoy that special spooky spectacle that has been Halloween in San Francisco for the better part of a century. And when the NIMBYs come back to try to take away New Years Eve or Carnaval, we'll keep celebrating this fight – one party at a time.