Chicagoween

About the only thing scary about Daley Plaza when it gets themed for Halloween is that it becomes a ghost town.
I guess the plaza needs something to fill its space between when the farmer’s market ends and the Christkindlmarket begins. But I don’t think this half hearted attempt at a Halloween theme quite works. There are some orange and black tents and the fountain is dyed orange (because that’s how the city rolls for holidays). With nothing else done, a passerby could mistake Franken Plaza for a group of Cincinnati Bengals fans that had rented out Daley Plaza for the day.
The hours when activities take place (and the food tents are open) are incredibly short Monday through Wednesday (11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.). On the weekends, the activities go on longer (until 8:00 p.m.) but when I went to see Goonies here, there still wasn’t much of a crowd. There are probably more people for a Midnight Circus performance or the Pyrotechnic shows but they probably still don’t pack the plaza.
I think the problem is, there’s really not much going on to attract a crowd that sticks around. Two food tents? A tent giving flu shots? A stage with pumpkins underneath? Someone making balloon animals? This isn’t a downtown festival. It’s an abomination of half thought out vaguely Halloween themed acitivites. And almost nothing for grownups. Of course it is sort of meant for kids.
They have started showing this movies this year (6:00 p.m. on weekend nights and Halloween) which have a grown up feel (and almost no appeal to children). Goonies? Ghostbusters? The original 1931 Frankenstein? The many kids I saw at the screening ended up so bored during Goonies that they ended up sliding down the Picasso sculpture en masse (it’s a kid free person’s nighmare) the entire film. Fun for the whole family? Apparently not in Franken Plaza.
But while the festival isn’t scary or overly interesting, I do have to give it credit for being really creepy. At Goonies there was a hobo clown magician. I was a bit creeped out by that myself. But I don’t think that’s what the city was aiming for either. In the end, however, it’s good to know that in the budget crisis the city is scaling back things to where they become pointless.