You can't find any better place in the U.S. than New York to celebrate Halloween this year — except Santa Ana, California?
That's the scary conclusion drawn by a report published Monday by WalletHub, a personal finance website.
WalletHub ranked 100 of the country's most populous cities according to their performance in three categories: "trick-or-treater friendliness," "Halloween parties and activities," and the local forecast for Oct. 31.
As you'd expect from a city on the West Coast, Santa Ana will be warmer than New York on Monday. According to WalletHub analysts who combed Yelp and Eventbrite listings, it's also home to more costume, party supply and candy stores, movie theaters, amusement parks, haunted houses and pumpkin patches per capita.
But we suspect New York must be a ghoul-tastic second with respect to "trick-or-treater friendliness." (When you unpack that category, it includes such metrics as the number of residents age 14 and younger and trick-or-treat stops, population density, walking distances between buildings, and the crime and pedestrian fatality rates.)
And Santa Ana has nothing like our Village Halloween Parade, the floats, puppets, and performances at which draw tens of thousands of costumed revelers.
Santa Ana also doesn't have a Tompkins Square Park Dog Halloween Parade, where pooches dress up like Donald Trump and Darth Vader. It will never boast Halloween fetes quite as hipster as the Secret Loft's or MoMA PS1's annual bashes. It didn't spawn 2015's most popular topical costume, Sexy Pizza Rat.
All we have to say is, back off, Santa Ana. If you try to claim this holiday, the real pizza rats will be coming for you.