Trinity Park trick-or-treating meets the Web
October 23, 2007
With Halloween coming it, it's no surprise that folks are getting ready for the onslaught of trick-or-treaters preparing to come down the streets next week.
But how ready do you need to be? In my neck of my 'hood, on N. Duke St., the little ones and their parents don't seem to wander around. No surprise: the best costume for Duke/Gregson trick-or-treaters would be an orange traffic cone, and with the speeds on the street, there's too great a risk of turning into an accidental speed bump.
Other blocks in places like Trinity Park, Watts-Hillandale, and other neighborhoods, though, see much greater turnout... hundreds of kids, in some cases, with W-H bringing out police officers to help shepherd the 700+ kids along W. Club Blvd.
So how do you know if you're going to need to be buying treats or not? A local resident, Ryan Williams has the answer: a web site where he's collecting street addresses and amount of candy distributed this year. Once the data is collected, it'll be possible to visualize or at least publish the high and low points of candy demand.
The whole idea demonstrates what's great about neighborhood listservs in the Internet era. John Hodges-Copple (a TP resident and regional planner for the Triangle J Council of Governments) suggested in a moment of seeming whimsy the need for some kind of Google map showing candy demand in an email sent at 7:41 pm last week. Less than three hours later, Williams responds to the list with the web site for collecting the candy counts.
No word whether Williams is willing to collect the candy data for all of Durham or just Trinity Park, but if you're in the neighborhood at least, stop by and leave your candy numbers this year.
There's no restriction to Trinity Park. I plan to map whatever I get...If I get counts from all over Durham, I'll just make the map bigger.
Posted by: Ryan Williams | October 23, 2007 at 07:10 PM
We all know that Trinty Park has the best candy haul. I took my neighbor over there a couple of years back. We walked around for about 2 hours and she must have collected 5-10 lbs of candy.
Would someone like to start the egging list? fun places in town where kids still throw eggs at people on Halloween?
Posted by: Natalie | October 24, 2007 at 04:28 AM
True Halloween aficionados know that the Glendale/Markham traffic circle is ground zero for the best Halloween in Durham.
As far as those eggs go, first, it's not fun, and second, throwing eggs at the wrong person is liable to get ugly in a hurry. Let's don't encourage that sort of thing.
Posted by: barry | October 24, 2007 at 08:58 AM
so what, you need a cop to help you herd your kids around to trick or treat? i agree that people are 10 kinds of speeding on Duke, but they are also doing it here (Chapel Hill Rd) and i am laying in mountains of candy. hold your kid(s'?)'s hand and come on by. no egging, please, i get enough trash in my yard from the bus stop, kthxbai.
Posted by: sinikl | October 24, 2007 at 11:38 PM