Doing Halloween Coconut Grove-style
Celia Cruz and Mario won the costume contest at CocoWalk last night for best female and best male costumes, but I think Celia is really a man. I was honored to be one of the judges up on the stage.
This is the sea of faces we saw as we looked out from the stage. CocoWalk had one of the largest crowds, aside from the street itself at the triangle of Grand, Main and McFarlane.
There were quite a few great faces in the crowd.
We hit every party in the Village, we started at Thriller Night, went to the Allure Salon, then to the Taurus and then hit Commodore Plaza were we stopped at Greenstreet and then The Ivy, which was the perfect gothic setting. We ran into these lovely ladies at Sandbar Grill.
The time change (did you turn your clocks back?) kept people out later and as the night wore on, it got busier and busier as it usually does. Whether anyone wants to believe it or not, people come out later to party in Miami. They start out late and want to stay out late.
I was with a group of seven or eight and when we would get lost, we knew to look for each other at Olav's on Virginia Street, the place where the locals hang out.
There were some really clever costumes around. The crowd at CocoWalk had some of the best. The band did a lot of Michael Jackson numbers and were spot on, sounding just like him.
Some other cool costumes were at the Allure Salon party on Main Highway. It was a sophisticated crowd, it sort of reminded me of Mad Men, I don't know why.
The Thriller Night dancers at the Mayfair Promenade really had the late night crowd going.
People danced late into the night. Now it's November 1, the end of another great Halloween.
Bottom three photos by AnnaMaria Windisch-Hunt, all the rest by Tom Falco
posted by Tom Falco at 7:50 AM
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7 Comments:
Great Weather, Great Pics, Great Crowd, & by 3:00 everyone was ready to call it. The Grove once again at its Best. We are so lucky to live here.
to Grape and sailfast..You guys are kidding of course. THe new location of Cocowalk for Halloween was a fiasco. Grape - you showed pictures of store and party events mainly for the local few in the know. For the rest of the people it was a crowded penned in mess. Why in the world did they change the venus from closing the street to using Cocowalk. You used to be able to walk and SEE the people showing off their costumes ala Lincoln Road and Key West. Now you got a jammed in music festival (with people dressed up). Perhaps many liked it that way. I would rather have a larger crowd that really celebrates Halloween rather than just "party". Cocowalk wins - the Grove loses. And what happened to the weekly block party on Commodore Plaza. This was the one week when it should have been on!
New location of CocoWalk? CocoWalk is it's own entity, they had their own thing going on, so did the Promenade at Mayfair and The Ivy and Commodore Plaza drew many people and the Taurus, etc.
The closing of the street was never a planned thing, the City didn't sanction that. No one got permits and no one every planned to close the street in previous years. It just happened out of necessity.
Same thing happened briefly on 4th of July because so many people left Peacock Park and overtook McFarlane Road.
It was a great night in the Grove -which shows how much people love coming to the Grove and who do in fact come to the Grove. The costumes were outrageous. Everyone looks forward to the block parties - next one is next week.
It was a great night from one end of the Grove to the other. I do agree with comment above that Commodore should definitely have been closed. They had the right venue to do a Costume Contest (as the Tourus of the past) It might have taken some congestion out of CocoWalk area. The Thriller Party at Mayfair was a great addition for a younger crowd and no one miss behaved. We took a break and watched streams of costumed people pass by our window a very Andy Warhol film experience, with action. Next year I think I will set up a camera to document 4 hours of nothing but extraordinary costumes streaming continuously by.
Mario and his cart made from a cooler was genius. haha loved it
Wow, look at that. A bunch of people had a good time, which for many involved having some drinks, and the sky didn't fall.
Guess having people party in the grove won't cause its ultimate destruction after all.
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