OB Halloween Walkabout

Evil Clown sushi chef on Brighton: I’d like a hand roll, please.

By Joaquin Antique

Being an occasional column featuring sights and sounds from Ocean Beach and Point Loma, this edition celebrates Halloween in OB.

Haunted house on Saratoga

Pet owners, keep you critters inside this weekend so they’re not harmed by goblins!

Day Of The Dead calavera sculpture at Bravos

Ghost gliding by the OB Hostel

T-shirt at the Pacifica store on Newport

Flamingo skeleton

Attention Goldilocks: You left your wig hat and keys on Cable Street!

Ghostly Grateful Dead Jerry bear apparition in Voltaire Street sidewalk patch.

An OB Halloween memory:

It was late October, some year in the 1970s and my girlfriend Mary Pat and I were hanging out in OB, bored.

We had no Halloween party to go to, no costumes, no ideas.

Finally, I suggested we grab some pink bedsheets from the closet, wrap them like Hari Krishna robes and walk down to Newport.  There we could display ourselves to the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd that was lined up outside the Strand Theater for the midnight show.

To top off my costume, I bought a bald head wig at the Coronet and cut a hole in the back so my pony tail would stick out.  We promenaded up and down Newport earning some laughs and catcalls, had a few beers, and then walked back to her place on Muir.

Before we went in, we were sitting on the curb outside the apartment, chatting and smoking cigarettes when a car ominously pulled up and lowered the window.   The guys inside had a big chrome, pressurized fire extinguisher which they used to totally soak us head to toe, cackling at their ingenuity.

We yelled curses at the Halloween pranksters as they roared off into the OB night.   We went inside for a warm shower and some dry clothes.  I was angry, but Mary Pat sniffed her Krishna robe and said, “I suppose we should be grateful they were spraying water”.