Vegas to hold downtown Halloween parade

October 11, 2010 by Chad Martinez 

Residents lend helping hands for Halloween party

Tiny goblins, ghouls and ghosts run rampant in every city on Halloween, asking for candy at every household and threatening neighbors to smell their feet if they don’t get a Snickers. But Halloween is a favorite holiday even for adults, especially in Las Vegas, where you can dress as crazy as you want with no repercussions.

Why then does Las Vegas not have a Halloween parade like other large cities around the country?
This year is going to be different. Aside from the Strip’s usual expensive and culturally watered-down mega-parties, Las Vegans now have a downtown alternative.

The Las Vegas Halloween Parade is the brainchild of Cory Mervis and will become a reality this Halloween with the help of a handful of friends and sponsors.

“I think that the downtown area is the heart of Las Vegas,” said Mervis, a 15-year veteran of the Burning Man festival, a week-long festival in the Black Rock Desert, just north of Reno.

“I want to bring the creative piece and the radically inclusive piece and the radically participatory aspect,” Mervis said. “If you read the website, it’s the basic tenets of Burning Man.”

The tenets are community, participation, self-expression and self-reliance.

Helping Mervis make the parade a reality are several sponsors, like Las Vegas Weekly and Repurpose America (formerly Greener Vegas).

Repurpose America is a business dedicated to saving and repurposing waste left over from conventions.

They have provided the material that will be used for producing the parade and also hold puppet-making workshops at their warehouse space.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun and even bigger next year,” said Suzanne Lugano as she painted the head of a giant Carmen Miranda puppet at one of the workshops.

A committee made up of UNLV hospitality majors is also helping plan the parade.

“I really am enjoying working with the students and I think they get a lot out of it,” Mervis said. “I don’t think they teach parade production class at UNLV.”

One sponsor, Liberty Salvage & Recycling, is helping to carry the green theme throughout the duration of the project by collecting, separating and recycling any waste generated by the parade.

And in keeping with the green theme, attendees are encouraged to repurpose past costumes.
“You can be a Batman dalmatian if you want,” Mervis said.

The parade offers a great chance for people to experience the full spectrum of downtown, as it will link the two most popular downtown areas, the Fremont East District and the area near Charleston and Main Street.

Plenty of art-cars, drummers, dancers, puppets and artistically inclined Halloween buffs will take over the streets, hoping to make this inaugural parade the first of many.

The parade starts early evening Sunday, Oct. 31. It begins at Hoover and 4th Street, ending in the Fremont East District.