Boyertown is a town that has many traditions. One of them is the annual Halloween Parade, held in October, where many people from Boyertown come to dress up and walk the route with different floats and throw candy to spectators. Dating all the way back as early as 1912 normally the parade is held through main street, going through the middle of town. However, this year due to construction going through the usual route, the choice was made to reroute the event rather than cancel it.
The Parade was held on October 19th and started at 7 pm. It started right outside of BASH and went south on Monroe, took a right onto Philadelphia Avenue, a left onto Reading Avenue, continued straight to Warwick, taking another left to Second Street, followed by a left on Washington, a right on Third, another right back onto Monroe, going onto Second, and finally ending at Middle School West.
Jeremiah Haas, who worked and drove one of the floats in the parade for multiple years, said that “This is the fourth year I’ve done it. I wanted to do it for a long time ever since I first watched it and four years ago I just decided to do it. This year was special though, I talked a few of my friends into making the float with me so we ended up with two. The first of the two was a float based off of 90’s bands called the ‘Bashing Pumpkins’ the second was made for my kids based off the minions, we gave out bananas in addition to candy on that one. When I first started attending the parade as a float I wasn’t prepared for how crowded it gets and how much attention you need to keep to avoid hitting anyone.”
Steven Gregory, a BASH senior who attended and commentated over the parade “The Parade itself was great, all the floats looked [incredible].” ” There was tons of variety among [the floats]. I did notice that the crowd was super inappropriate. Multiple people running into the streets shoving each other trying to get candy. I’m not sure if this is a new thing or something that residents have built up over the years since this is the first time I’ve attended the parade in a few years, overall I thought that it was a good show especially the float production value.”
Logan Dice, a member of the marching band who participated in the parade, commented saying, “Being in the parade was a super cool experience, it was my third year doing it. It does get pretty tiring after a while having to march and remind people to not get too close. Also hearing the Ghostbusters theme around 13 times [was tiring].”
The parade was a success for all involved and we look forward to next year’s performance.
