“That first year when there was just this huge influx of people, all the restaurants were packed and none of us were ready for it,” says Adams of St. Helens’s first surge. “We all sold out of food, and we had lines two hours long waiting for dinner. The businesses were just like, ‘How do we handle this?’ It turned everything into chaos.” Over the years, she’s learned that, come October, menu items need to be “speed-friendly.”
Halloween hibernation
Even after abandoning ship at the street fair, Dani is happy with her life on the Hudson River. But for her and others, the changing leaves signal an adjustment to daily routines. For example: “I don’t want to go get a prescription in October,” she says.
It’s a specific example, but a common one: The line at CVS in Salem also kept HausWitch owner Feldmann from grabbing prescriptions during spooky season when she lived downtown—or really doing anything that required moving her car at all. “You just feel trapped,” she says. “You’re not eating at restaurants, you’re not going to get coffee at coffee places. It’s just for the tourists.” Alee DiGregorio, a Tarrytown mom, echoes this sentiment: “I’ve had to pay thousands of dollars to Instacart.”
Restaurant workers like Adams at St. Helens’s Klondike Tavern miss their regulars, who tend to disappear and reemerge come November. “Locals become strangers in October,” says Mikey Segarra, a lifelong Sleepy Hollow resident who, last year, was told to “get in line” while trying to enter his own home amid the festivities. To be fair, the tourists aren’t all bad. In 2017, he met a firefighter from Louisiana and his wife, in town for their annual three-week RV trip to the area, and since then, they reconnect and grab a beer each year.
Deyanira Cabreja, a nail artist who works by appointment only in a small Tarrytown office building, says last year was such a “nightmare” with all of her clients being late to their appointments due to traffic, that she had to close her salon on Saturdays. “It is tough for me and it’s annoying sometimes, but all you can do is just try to have patience,” she says, noting that she, too, still loves her hometown. “I’m a proud Horseman.”
