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Jun 09 '24
Did the US just invent drive through halloween?
I n n o v a t i o n people, few understand.
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u/Maple0_ Jun 09 '24
but if you do both you get more candy cause they generally schedule trunk or treat for the nearest Saturday or way earlier in the evening.
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u/Apprehensive_Ear4639 Jun 10 '24
As lame as trunk or treat is I’d have been into it. Rural ass Halloween sucks. There were two houses a reasonable walking distance and then my mom would drive us to our grandparents and a couple of her friends houses. Shame since my mom made some legit badass costumes for us.
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Jun 09 '24
People drove to the top house too.
Not everyone participates in Halloween and there's usually a street or two where everyone goes all out. People drive to these blocks because they represent density in quality and number of treats.
Meanwhile houses like my parents are often hard press to get trick or treaters because you have 3 houses on the block that does it and most of the time it's people you know kids showing up. So the bottom also represents a way for people in these blocks to get in on it.
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u/SlitScan Jun 09 '24
you still can, if you can afford the 2.5+ million for a house in one of those old well designed neighbourhoods.
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u/Shigglyboo Jun 09 '24
I live in a flat. There isn’t anywhere for my kid to trick or treat. Are we gonna buzz everybody and have them walk down a few flights of stairs? We also don’t own a car. For Halloween we just walk around town in costume and I buy her some candy. If we’re lucky we see a few other parents out with their kids and they exchange a little candy. I think some local restaurants and cafes will let kids trick or treat. But to do traditional style you need to live in a subdivision or an area with houses. Not everyone can afford a house.
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u/harfordplanning Jun 09 '24
I agree in some ways, but not totally.
In a car dependent area, a trunk or treat is a very good solution to a lack of walkability and safety. It creates a space for many people to partake in a holiday they would otherwise be excluded from.
That said, it'd be better if they didn't have to have one to not be excluded, but having something is better than nothing.
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u/coco_xcx Jun 10 '24
I am so happy my town still does door to door!! The older people get dressed up too & love passing out candy, it’s so sweet!
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u/FullMetalAurochs Jun 10 '24
I didn’t grow up doing either (Australian and just old enough it hadn’t spread here) but wtf… a car boot trick or treat. Wouldn’t a party at someone’s place be a better substitute for door to door treat seeking.
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u/black_lotus_ronin Jun 10 '24
my town still does a huge Halloween parade every year with floats and everything. upwards of 20,000 people show up for it annually. still captures the spirit to me. it's a small town of about 23,000 in the northeast.
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u/Kumirkohr Jun 10 '24
I grew up, ostensibly, in the middle of nowhere. The only thing within walking distance was the chicken coop and the mailbox, so trunk-or-treat at the local Elks Lodge was all we had.
I got the change to move to the big city, but that mindset of everything being too far away has still scarred me
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u/Shutaru_Kanshinji Jun 10 '24
I always thought this "trunk or treat" travesty grew out of misplaced parental fear.
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u/Vast-Combination4046 Jun 09 '24
It's a weird way to only share Candy with people you know and trust. Not really car culture. I think it's kinda weird but I kinda get the stranger danger in some communities.
I will not excuse parents driving around following/bussing their kids instead of walking.
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u/OstrichCareful7715 Jun 09 '24
In lots of places, you do both. Churches, schools and chamber of commerces put on Trunk or Treats. Then you do the real thing on Halloween. My kids have usually already done 5-6 Halloween themed events before the evening of the 31st.
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u/WriteBrainedJR Fuck lawns Jun 10 '24
Halloween was one of my top two holidays as a kid. I looked forward to it for months.
If I was a kid now, with no more trick or treat and schools banning costumes, it probably wouldn't be in the top 10.
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u/adlittle Jun 10 '24
I grew up in a neighborhood that was largely surrounded by a rural area where homes were much further apart on big roads. Still didn't have any sidewalks though. Every Halloween, lots of kids would descend up on the neighborhood to trick or treat, which would normally be really nice, except their parents still insisted on driving them from house to house.
Every Halloween would turn into a traffic jam, with engines rumbling and lights on high and car door slamming and parents yelling out the windows to call their kids or stopping to talk to each other from the driver's seat like cops blocking a street. It honestly ruined it for everyone. Even as a kid I was like "damn, all these cars really ruin everything."
It felt dangerous too, because this was still a rural neighborhood that'd been built without sidewalks and had lots of trees and hills and streetlights that were relatively far apart. Had people just dropped kids off at the entrance to the neighborhood or parked in one place (there was a large manufacturer/office with a huge parking lot not far from the entrance that was empty at night) and walked around with them, it would've been so much fun instead of becoming a game of dodgecars.
Cars ruin all the fun.
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u/ThoughtsAndBears342 Jun 10 '24
Trunk or treat, like cars themselves, has its uses in sparsely-populated rural areas. My problem is that it’s eroding neighborhood trick-or treating in urban and suburban areas because it’s more convenient for parents. This does have more to do with stranger-danger panic than with car dependency. If you’re really that paranoid about stranger-danger and cannot be convinced otherwise, take your kids trick or treating in a nursing home. The residents get to see cute kids in costumes and the kids get to trick or treat so it’s a win-win.
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u/Innomen Jun 10 '24
The death of Halloween hits me particularly deep. I wont go into why but when I was 16, the last time I went, it was still the normal old school Halloween. No city management of any kind, just everyone knew today is the day offer candy or not skip the houses with lights off. Walk around, see the people, costumes, decorations, and be ready to run down and savagely bludgeon bag snatchers.
I don't remember much of the night but I did get one guy telling me I was too old, but I got my half sack of candy that lasted weeks. And I could not be more grateful that I went that last time. I never went again, because they started regulating it, changing the date setting hours on it, and explicit age limits.
Of all the nostalgic things that make me sad, the fact that I will never see a real trick or treat again because everything is different now makes me most sad. The closest I ever got later was working as a zombie in a haunted house gig. But then that expired too.
I hate this fucking timeline with the fury of 1000 suns. AI rule can't come fast enough imo.
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u/Ausiwandilaz Jun 10 '24
The best part was cold, for some reason, the weather shifts RIGHT ON THAT DAY
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u/Navynuke00 Jun 10 '24
I live in a neighborhood that is mostly old people. Housing prices have skyrocketed in my city over the last few years, and a lot of young families can't afford to live here. So we're just surrounded by lots of racist geriatric transplants who complain about minorities and kids on our area NextDoor.
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u/Ragequittter Orange pilled Jun 10 '24
car industry ads since WW2 is one of the most successful pieces of brainwashing
everything in america is based on cars, from how cities are designed, to what houses can be built, to how each house HAS to have a place for the car
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u/_angry_cat_ Jun 10 '24
In my town, they literally had a drive through Halloween last year. Like people stood on the sidewalks on Main Street while parents drove by with their windows down so people could drop candy into the kids basket in the car. We live in a fairly walkable town, with lots of dense housing to where you could hit several blocks of houses in an hour or two. Hardly anyone is even out driving on Halloween night, so it’s incredibly low risk for a kid actually getting hit by a car. The car culture is absolutely insane.
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u/AlexfromLondon1 Jun 10 '24
I love the top picture. I remember trick or treating when I was a child.
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u/No_Cat4028 Jun 10 '24
Takes all the magic out of seeing all the cute decorations and walking up to the house where they might try and scare you though 🙁
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u/reptomcraddick Jun 11 '24
Right, but didn’t you then create the society that created the later? It sounds like you created the exact thing you despise
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u/cornsnicker3 Jun 11 '24
True story, we took kids somewhere for Halloween and because it had snowed/was cold, the parents literally slow rolled with the kids as they went door to door.
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u/heyuhitsyaboi Jun 13 '24
"Trunk or Treat" is usually performed IN ADDITION TO regular trick or treating!! It is NOT a substitute. This topic is almost always used as rage bait
Pre Covid there were two local schools that hosted this, its great for kids who's parents may be occupied later in the night for work or school
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u/clustered-particular Jun 09 '24 edited Jun 09 '24
This post honestly comes across as classist
Edit: People downvoting “if we downvote it enough it’ll be hidden so we don’t have to address the class component of car dependency” 🤡🤡🤡
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u/jaqueh Jun 09 '24
I grew up in sf which is very walkable but my neighbors were college students/young city workers who could care less about Halloween and I always tried trick or treating but no one around me bothered with the tradition.
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u/Daddygamer84 Jun 09 '24
Considering the subreddit, I'm not sure what the message is. I did Trunk-or-treat with my kids and it was a much better experience.
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u/CelestialPossum Commie Commuter Jun 09 '24
I remember going to a trunk-or-treat once that a local church was hosting and it honestly took a lot of the fun out of it for me, since I always loved seeing the different decorations on people's houses and walking around a parking lot is just not the same (I only remember going once tho). But it is genuinely depressing that a lot of neighborhoods just don't do trick-or-treating and that kids will miss out on that experience. Like yeah, it's a variety of factors and not any one thing, but it doesn't make it any less sad.