Holy Halloween!

Posted by: daradoodle | November 14, 2008

Holy Halloween!

I celebrated Halloween with a vengeance this year. My oh my, not only did I dress up on Friday night (Oct. 31st), but again on Saturday. The main reason being that Aaron came down from Beijing, so the whole weekend was coordinated in advance.

I came up with the idea for costume #1 about two hours before I was to be at a house party. I decided to “Go Green.” When I got to the party, I looked a little something like this…

Go Green!

After swinging by a second house party, we ended up at Eddy’s, Shanghai’s first gay bar. I actually got to meet THE Eddy! Fun guy… who likes to dance… a lot. We worked our way over to Club D2 where Paul and Dave met up with us. I managed to acquire an American flag bandana from a guy who proceeded to leave without taking it back. Woops! Well, I was feeling rather patriotic leading up to the presidential election, so I wasn’t too bothered. And the fact that the stars were encrusted with sparkly silver beads was a sign that it was meant to be. This piece of clothing would later go on to be the inspiration for Saturday night’s costume. But first, here are some photos from Friday night.

Guests at a house party do an Irish dance

Juliette & Kim

Aaron dancing on roller skates at D2

Me & Paul

I woke up on Saturday afternoon and couldn’t bare the thought of doing Halloween all over again, but a commitment is a commitment and the LGBT Shanghai 3rd Annual Halloween Pub Crawl was calling my name. I went back to Fudan, took a nap, then set out for costume #2.

All I needed was a yellow rain poncho and I found one across the street. I went online to look for a specific logo then made a replica out of a red folder, white drawing paper, and a blue Sharpie. Here’s the finished product!

Me & Sarah Palin

That’s right! American cheese! I received the most random comments throughout the night, but the best was being referred to as “Cheesy.”

The pub-crawl was by far the most organized operation I’ve been a part of since living in China. When we arrived at the meet-up point on Dagu Road, we paid 100 kuai and were given a map of all of the destinations for the evening. Not only were the destinations and addresses listed in English, but also in Chinese. There were three charter buses waiting outside to shuttle 150 people in costume around the city.

Everyone heading to their designated bus

Aaron striking a pose in front of our bus

Between locations, random prizes were awarded on the bus to those who met specific criteria. For example, the person on the bus with the hairiest back, or the youngest person on the pub crawl. More prizes were awarded for other reasons, but I’ll save that discussion for the ‘X’ rated version of Ambassador Doodle.

Some of the costumes were brilliant. I was impressed to see that some of our political figures from the U.S. were in attendance.