Halloween Parade

The NYC Urban Sketchers headed to the Tomkins Square Halloween Dog Parade last weekend. My friend, Susan was hosting and we started out at the location where the marchers were lining up. We had about an hour before the parade was actually starting so we hoped we would be able to sketch a bit before it got too crowded. Catwoman and her cat dog were the first ones there so I was able to sketch them and the vehicle. I was sitting on my stool so I was looking through the bars of the barricade. The doggie wearing the tutu was there early, but she didn't like staying in one spot and her owner moved around a lot too. 

The crowd behind us got bigger as the morning went on and at one point Susan couldn't see anything from her chair so she said she was going to try moving to another spot. That didn't work well for her at all and I think she ended up being frustrated because she didn't get to sketch much of anything. After several phone calls the two of us met up and planned to go into Tompkins Square Park and meet up with any other sketchers who showed up. That was where our show-and-tell was supposed to take place. But when we walked over to the park security told us that nobody was allowed to come into the park because that's here all the marchers were ending up. Security was trying to get everyone out of the park. We didn't have a way to contact anyone else so Susan posted on FB that there would be no show-and-tell because the park was closed. It turned out there were about 8 sketchers in the park sitting near each other. They had their own show-and-tell and actually were able to sketch a few of the dogs from the parade.

Susan and I were tired and sort of lost our ambition to sketch by that point. We needed to get away from the huge crowd and we ended up walking quite a ways over to Union Square Park on 14th Street. We sat in the park for a while and then went to get some water at Whole Foods before heading home.

It was a fun experience trying to sketch that crazy crowd...but I don't think I would do it again!