I Hate Halloween Bar Parties

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Halloween Bar Parties are the bastard child of New Year's Eve Bar Parties. While New Year's Eve at a bar is literally insufferable - Ohhhhh, I get it, appetizers means nine cold buffalo wings and rubber vegetables and ranch dip that's now orange because some asshole decided to dunk his wing directly into the dip holder - at least Halloween can be somewhat tolerable for five seconds because you will probably see one or two clever costumes. But eventually you will see a group of guys wearing suits, and they will say they are characters from Mad Men, and you will have to go home and get your shotgun to re-right society. It's the only way.

Unless you are blacked out and have already thrown up all over yourself, or you are the size of Andre the Giant, or you like to be sodomized by strangers wearing shitty Darth Vader costumes, Halloween Night at the bars is rarely fun. Personally, I prefer a house party, but even that shit gets old pretty quick. Because in between shots of tequila and whiskey, if you allow your brain a moment of clarity, you will quickly realize that you're drunk and standing around with a bunch of your friends who are dressed up like a pretend characters. It's fucking creepy.

Halloween is also used as a ruse by bar owners and sometimes friends to solicit money from you and force you to pretend you're having a good time. Oh, it says here that there is a $25 cover charge. For what? Why am I giving you money to come inside your stupid bar? So I can not get to the bar to order a drink because Little Bo Peep has her tongue stuffed into Frankenstein's fucking face, and they're nursing their fucking cranberry-vodkas, and yet I'm the one who receives dirty looks from your not-as-attractive-as-she-thinks bartender for reaching my hand out to get her attention? I HAVE A HANDFUL OF CASH! I WANT TO DRINK A LOT SO I CAN FORGET I AM IN THIS FUCKING BAR! WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE I JUST FLIPPED OFF YOUR FUCKING GRANDMOTHER? Fuck your party and fuck your bar. Halloween is better spent standing on your lawn dressed wearing all black holding a kitchen knife, staring at children who are trick-or-treating through the neighborhood. Much more fulfilling.

I went to college in Baltimore, and Baltimore's Fells Point has an insane Halloween gathering. Thousands of people flock to the bars in this area and drink a shit-load of alcohol, punch each other in the face, throw up, get maced by police, and piss all over every surface possible. It's literally impossible to get into any of the good bars, unless you have DD boobies or you show up at noon. I once tried showing up early and ended up in a cab at 11pm with no shoes or pants on. So instead, you're relegated to these horrible bars mainly because you can order a warm Budweiser draft without having to shoulder your way through 300 people. This same situation translates perfectly to Manhattan, only on a more grandiose scale. You go where you think it might not be too crowded, and that means heading to a dive bar on 10th Avenue where most of the patrons are probably on parole and do not think highly of your Omar Little costume.

So why do we go through the trouble? What chemical in our brains says, "Spend lots of money to say you had fun the next day, even though you didn't have fun and actually spent the night wishing you drank alone in your apartment and watched the Friday the 13th marathon on Spike?" It honestly baffles me. I refuse to believe everyone enjoys standing ass-to-dick-to-hip-to-crotch with a bunch of strangers who are dressed up like fucking pirates.

Yes, I may be a cranky thirty-year-old prick, but admit it, part of you is hating yourself for spending $50 to go to the same bar you usually stumble into on a weekly basis. Only on normal nights, you  have more than enough room to spin in a circle with your arms fully extended until you fall over and break a high-top table. But the funny thing is, I know come Halloween night, part of me will want to go out. I know it's crazy, and I know it's going against everything I've said here in the last few paragraphs, but I can't help it. A night to openly binge drink at any age is a night you should spend a lot of money. See? It's stenciled into my frontal lobe.I don't like it, but it's there no matter.

This seems like a good place to end, because I'm starting to contradict myself. So hey, uh, have fun out there! Hopefully you make it home still wearing your shoes and pants.