it's interesting to me that halloween breeds hyper-local activity clusters in the exact opposite way that most are built. Protests, marches, etc. target large, well-travelled areas first, but trick-or-treaters favor the opposite -- the less likely a car is to drive down a road, the more likely it is to have trick-or-treaters on it. Yet two blocks away, you can have dead silence.
Hastings Square was so crowded you couldn't actually walk down the street, but
Kenwood St. had more candy, and had nobody at all.
crschmidt
My house never gets any trick-or-treaters (by which I mean, it gets about three) because the houses in my neighborhood are far apart and the loot:time ratio is too low. Also because there are a lot of steps to the front door.
What really annoyed me was the kids without costumes (holding masks, not wearing them) who practically demanded candy. "What's your costume?" "Uhhh... gimme candy."
However, I did get a fair number of discerning 4 - 7 year old foodies asking what the percentage of cacao in it, though I believe they phrased it as, "how much real chocolate is in this?"
I also had a share of older trick or treaters — in the 11 - 14 age range early on, but I didn't begrudge them — I told them all one is never too old for Hallowe'en.
Outright begging without even a pretense to ritual, on the other hand, is to be condemned.
testing this one...