'I wanna be Obama,' whines a 12-year-old girl, as she stretches a rubbery grinning mask of the would-be president over her fingers like a puppet. 'Ugh, no, you won't be able to breathe in that thing,' her mother snaps, and goes back to her mobile phone conversation.
Bulging plastic-wrapped sexy bo-peep outfits, scythes, wands and Joker masks buffer me as people push past in the aisle of Ricky's, the first stop for Halloween costumes in New York City. It is that time again. Each year there is a massive parade in the West Village, and the city descends into temporary madness, as a strange mixture of gothic images (white faced Grim Reapers, skeletons, grinning pumpkin heads) and pop cultural favourites (Batmans, Steve Irwins with sting-rays and scantily clad nurses) collide.
When it's all over, wannabe Anna Nicole Smiths and McCains stumble drunk past packed tourist trap restaurants in the Village and the atmosphere goes from revelry to rehab in the blink of a blood-spattered eye ball.
But this year, a different kind of dangerously drunk anticipation hangs over this overpopulated island. There is a ghoulish atmosphere of unrest and uncertainty in the wake of what is simply referred to as 'What's been happening lately' or in shorthand, 'Wall Street'.
Not to mention that little election that's coming up, which is giving everyone the jitters. Campaigners canvass outside subway stations and street vendors trying to make a buck are on every corner hocking political pins and Che Guevara-style Barack Obama t-shirts.
I found a crudely made Obama badge, with glitter around the edges, and hung it from its safety pin, like a thought bubble, on my bedroom wall. I wonder what it will come to represent in years to be. Perhaps a relic of a time that never came, a would-be president filed away for political anecdotage. Maybe it will take on a different meaning? Hope in politics, even when instated by someone new and revered, can quickly turn to disappointment.
Walking through the West Village, before the parade takes over, I notice the homeless people have popped up — they are dotted along the steps and dents where the sidewalk hits the buildings. They all sit in a prayer-like C-curve, supplicating to the wealthy. Wearing hoods, faces burrowed, they are our New York monks.
They hold cardboard signs in front of them: 'Out of luck, need a buck.'
It is cold today, the wind is whipping