Chicagoing: A City Overtaken

 I never used to believe those TV shows with their Halloween-themed episodes where every single person in the show was walking around in an amazing costume. I thought this was only a TV thing, until I moved to Chicago. Seriously, walking down the street this entire weekend everyone has been completely decked out in their Halloween attire.

Mr. B wanted to eat this costume:

I attribute this to all the Halloween "pop-up shops" that have now taken over nearly every vacant store front. But, this has given us a great opportunity to allow the pooches to spend the weekend dressed in costume so they could meet many more people. Miss M decided to be an angel this year:

Ironically, we had also gotten a devil costume, but she actually refused to wear it and freaked out. We went to a neighborhood Halloween pet event in the morning. Mr. B won a prize for his turtle costume:

But we really thought they deserved to win:

We took lots of long walks in our neighborhood where the pooches got a lot of attention for their costumes:

Then we went to the North Halsted Street Halloween Parade. I used to live in this neighborhood for years, and I had no idea what a huge, fun parade this is. People really go all out, and they had a huge parade that we were able to be part of. They even had floats, bands, and tons of spectators. 

Miss M had such a great time marching in the parade; she had to greet every single person, and people were even commenting that she was just like a political candidate who had to meet everyone. It was a really fun time, and E is going to post more photos on Wednesday.

We wish we had put together a "group costume" for the pooches, and maybe something we could dress up for also. Did anyone do this, or have any group costume ideas we could do next year?

Pooches: Live Action Costumes & Campaigning

 While A was busy taking pictures of the pooches:

I had a lot of fun taking videos with the Flip.

In the first video, Mr. B and I are sizing up our competition at the Halloween Pet Parade; B is acting very turtle-like, while Miss M does an unconvincing job of being an angel:

On Halloween, we headed to Lakeview for the North Halsted Street Halloween Parade, where Ms. M worked hard campaigning for pit bulls. There were over thousands of people at the parade, and Ms M made sure to greet each and every one. Watch how much she wiggles and how happy she is to have the attention:

Mr. B Photographs Halloween in 10 Pictures

Since all the Halloween parties were nowhere near our neighborhood, the pooches spent half of the weekend cruising around the city checking out pedestrians, bikers and other drivers. Ms. M loves looking out the front windshield, so she can keep an eye on where we are going.

Mr. B loves to rest his huge noggin on the window looking into other cars and saying hi to bikers.

It was a pretty busy weekend for Mr. B, he spent most of his time taking pictures of our weekend adventures. At the Halloween Parade in University Village, he checked out the competition and

 even saw the bull rider costume from Target that he considered buying.

He was quite impressed by the viking and his dog in the dragon costume. He wished that we came prepared and matched. Maybe next year we will match Mr. B's costume and I will come as Bowser, Ms. M will be Princess Toadstool and A will be Mario.

Even kids came prepared for the Halloween Parade.

After the Halloween Parade, we came back to the neighborhood and walked the pooches in costume on a very long walk.

On Halloween, we headed out to Lakeview for the North Halsted Street Halloween Parade. The parade is so big, that they had police barricades set up blocking numerous streets. Just to find a place to park was pretty stressful.

Lucky for Mr. B, he got to see the Viking again and his loyal dragon dog.