Boulder to London

Everyone has their favourite holiday and Halloween definitely has its share of fanatics.  I’ve personally never been a huge fan probably because I view hunting for and finding the perfect costume to be annoying so I usually end up being a) stressed and b) dressed up as something very uninteresting that is some combination of clothes from my closet, my rasta wig and some fake blood (picture  rasta businessman returns from the dead or rasta beach bum shark attack victim).  My friends Jeanie and Julie have solved this problem by simply maintaining a ‘costume closet’ which is added to and taken from throughout the year for every ‘fancy dress’ occasion (as they say over here).

As I think back to all of my Halloweens, one of the best times I’ve had was at beach party my friends Adam and Dennis put on.  They were renting adjacent sides of this duplex and had thrown some pretty famous parties in their time, but they decided that this year’s Halloween party would set a new standard.  They started by ordering a truckload of sand so that they could fill the two adjacent garages with about 6 inches of sand each….after all, what’s a beach party without the beach?  Since it was going to be cold out, they decided that it would be way too difficult to have people go between the two units via the front doors so they cut a hole in the wall between the two garages to allow easy access between what then became two beaches themed Heaven and Hell.  In Heaven they painted all of the walls and ceilings with a light blue paint, hung cotton clouds and used bright white lights.  On the Hell side they hung dark sheets, used red lights and cut out flames as decorations.  Each side had a bar serving theme appropriate drinks…Heaven served beer and wine, Hell was all shots.  The cops came a few times to tell us to turn down the music, but I think once they saw the setup, even they were impressed and granted a level of leniency.  Needless to say, we partied well into the morning and had a great time that will be tough to top.