Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why the theme of the annual Village Halloween Parade is “meow.” We’ll also meet some Mexican American artists who have been assembling Day of the Dead altars with one thought in mind: authenticity.
Jeanne Fleming decided on the theme for this year’s Village Halloween Parade during the summer, when she heard that Senator JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, had once said that the United States was effectively run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
“I immediately went ‘meow,’” said Fleming, the longtime artistic and producing director of the venerable parade, “and that became the theme.”
So tonight will be for more than just ghoulish ghosts and ghastly goblins. There will be more cats on the Avenue of the Americas between Canal Street and West 15th Street than there were in a certain Broadway musical — 35 giant purring puppets; unicyclists dressed as Cheshire cats, a samba reggae drum line of cat-costumed women and people who are transgender or nonbinary; and the actor André De Shields as grand marshal. Fleming offered him the role because he had appeared as Old Deuteronomy in “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” the recent reimagining of the long-running musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“In a sense, the theme is not political at all,” Fleming said. “It isn’t as much about politics as what the vibe is.” She says she tries to “read the zeitgeist” before settling on a theme. During the summer cats “really, really came into the culture — the cat ladies, eating the cats,” she said, referring to a baseless rumor repeated by Donald Trump about Haitian immigrants.
“I started getting calls from all over, telling me what cat ladies are in New York City,” she said. “These are women who are powerful, who are strong. They are ready to stop going meow, and are ready to roar.”
And, of course, she said, cats are closely tied to the Halloween tradition of witches and “the whole iconography of Halloween.”
For the Day of the Dead
On the calendar, Halloween is followed by the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday that honors deceased loved ones. My colleague Sarah Bahr watched as volunteers from a nonprofit that serves New York’s Mexican immigrant community prepared for it.
Danny Tepi and three other Mexican American artists huddled in a room in a Gothic revival church, painting skulls and birds on talavera tiles and flowers on a vibrant floral portico for Day of the Dead ofrendas — altars.
For the past two months, Tepi and other volunteer artists for the nonprofit, Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders, have met regularly at the church to work on the tiles, paper flowers and sawdust carpets, known as tapetes, for two eight-foot-tall ofrendas.
To celebrate the Day of the Dead, one ofrenda will be displayed at events at Lincoln Center through Sunday. The other will be at the Flatiron North Plaza on Friday. The artists from Mano a Mano also created ofrendas for events held this month at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery and the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. The Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico from Oct. 28 to Nov. 2.
Unlike Tepi, a fashion adviser for Chanel who grew up in the Mexican state of Puebla, most of the volunteers who work on the ofrendas do not have backgrounds as artists or stylists. But they share a common goal: creating an authentic representation of a holiday that is a cornerstone of Mexican culture.
“So many people think Day of the Dead is scary, like Halloween,” said Juan Carlos Aguirre, the executive director of Mano a Mano, which is based in the Church of the Intercession on West 155th Street. “But just because two holidays happen around the same time doesn’t mean they’re related.”
He said that the Day of the Dead was “about honoring and welcoming the spirits of the deceased — you’re creating a feast for them — whereas Halloween is about getting rid of them.”
Mano a Mano created its first ofrenda in 2004 for a celebration at Madison Square Park. The next year, it moved to St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, where it has set up an ofrenda for the past 19 years.
The goal, Aguirre said, was to create a public space for the city’s growing Mexican American population to honor their dead, because the candles and incense that typically adorn ofrendas inside families’ homes could pose a problem in a New York City apartment. Beyond that, Mano a Mano hoped to clue in others about the holiday.
Each of Mano a Mano’s ofrendas includes dozens of items designed to guide the souls of the dead on their annual visit home. There are glowing candles, cempasúchil (marigold) flowers, copal incense, fresh pan de muerto (bread of the dead), apples and bananas, papel picado and calaveras (sugar skulls).
The items vary in complexity. A sugar skull takes a couple of days to mold, air-dry and decorate with icing, while a sawdust carpet can take a couple of months to make because the sawdust has to be colored with water and dye and then dried.
“Everything has to be new, and it has to be handmade,” Aguirre said. “The only things we reuse every year are the flower vases and the candle holders.”
After the ofrendas are finished, they are transported in a U-Haul truck from the church to the sites, where other Mano a Mano volunteers erect them and then are on hand to answer questions. They encourage members of the public to write a message, light a candle or add a photo to the ofrenda.
After the celebrations conclude this weekend, the food on the ofrendas will be donated, and some of the handcrafted items will be sold to raise money for next year’s ofrendas — the planning for which is already underway.
“We think about it throughout the entire year,” Aguirre said.
Weather
Today will be sunny with a high temperature in the upper 70s. Tonight, the sky will turn partly cloudy, with a low near the low 60s and a slight chance of showers.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Nov. 1 (Diwali and All Saints’ Day)
The latest Metro news
New York City streets
Legalizing jaywalking: The City Council’s bill to allow pedestrians to cross the street wherever they please became law this weekend. Some fear the change will lead to more pedestrian deaths.
A developer’s dream?: The waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn, could accommodate thousands of housing units. But the borough’s maritime industry wants to protect existing marine operations and reinvigorate a working waterfront it sees as vital to the city.
Congressional races
Hope for House Democrats?: After Democrats endured embarrassing midterm election losses in New York in 2022 that cost them control of the House, they say their candidates are avoiding that year’s missteps. But are voters upset about inflation and the migrant influx ready to take them back?
Working to flip a House seat: In a New Jersey district that’s split nearly evenly between Democrats and Republicans, Sue Altman, the Democratic candidate, has focused on reproductive rights in her effort to unseat Representative Thomas Kean Jr., a Republican.
Other news
Suing over “sweeps”: A housing support group sued New York City for throwing away homeless people’s property. The lawsuit argues that the city’s cleanups, or “sweeps,” violate constitutional safeguards against illegal searches and seizures.
Prosecuting a nonprofit executive: The former executive director of a Brooklyn nonprofit dedicated to helping Black transgender people was charged with stealing nearly $100,000 of its money.
Autumn dry streak: The city has not had a meaningful amount of rainfall for 29 straight days. That’s despite a tiny shower on Tuesday that broke a rain-free streak. If the dry spell continues through Election Day, it will beat the current record, set 100 years ago.
METROPOLITAN diary
Timing the Lights
Dear Diary:
Out late one night with friends, I decided to skip the subway and take a cab home to my tiny studio apartment on 94th Street just off Central Park West.
As the cabby drove up 10th Avenue, it became clear that he was intent on making every green light as we drove north.
The game continued when we got to Amsterdam Avenue. I enjoyed watching him manage the flow of traffic, hunched over the wheel as he focused on the task.
But when we got to 94th Street, he kept going, oblivious to the turn he had missed. I let him go a few more blocks before speaking up.
“Hey,” I said, “I’m really enjoying your successful game making all the lights, but you’ve passed my street.”
We both laughed, and then he turned off the meter and drove me home.
— Richard Chused
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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