New York’s Village Halloween Parade with ViVi (Viola Manuela Ceccarini)

It has been called “New York’s Carnival.” The Annual Halloween Parade is presented on the night of every Halloween in New York City‘s Greenwich Village.

The Village Halloween Parade, initiated in 1973 by Greenwich Village puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee, that lays claim to being the world’s largest Halloween parade where in recent years it is reported to have 60,000 marchers and 2 million spectators.

Well, this is New York City, it couldn’t be otherwise.

Go big or Go home they say! The parade’s most signature features are its large puppets which are animated by hundreds of volunteers.

The official parade theme each year is applied to the puppets.

The official route on Sixth Avenue from Spring Street to 16th Street is 1.4 miles (the distance from the gathering spot at Canal and Sixth to Spring adds another 0.2 miles).