“That first year when there was this huge influx of people, all the restaurants were packed and none of us were prepared for it,” says Adams of St. Helens’ first boom. “We all ran out of food, and we had to wait in two-hour-long lines to get dinner. Businesses were just like, ‘How are we going to handle this?’ It turned everything into chaos.” Over the years, he has learned that, come October, menu items need to be “speed-friendly.”
halloween hibernation
Even after leaving the ship at the street fair, Dani is happy with her life on the Hudson River. But for him and others, the changing leaves signal adjustments in daily routines. For example: “I don’t want to go to the doctor to get a prescription in October,” she says.
This is a specific example, but a common one: The line at CVS in Salem prevented Feldman, Hoswich’s owner, from picking up prescriptions during the scary season when she lived in town — or indeed preventing her from doing anything that required taking her car to work. “You just feel trapped,” she says. “You’re not eating at restaurants, you’re not going to get coffee at coffee places. It’s just for tourists.” Tarrytown mom Ellie DiGregorio echoes this sentiment: “I’ve had to pay thousands of dollars to Instacart.”
Restaurant workers like Adams at the Klondike Tavern in St. Helens miss their regular employees, who disappear and then reemerge in November. “In October the locals become strangers,” says Mickey Segarra, a lifelong resident of Sleepy Hollow, who was told to “get in line” when trying to enter his home amid the festivities last year. To be fair, not all tourists are bad. In 2017, he met a Louisiana firefighter and his wife in town for their annual three-week RV trip, and since then, they reconnect every year to grab a beer.
Deyanira Cabreza, a nail artist who works by appointment only in a small office building in Tarrytown, says last year was such a “nightmare” when all her clients arrived late to their appointments because of traffic, forcing her to close her salon on Saturdays. “It’s hard for me and sometimes even annoying, but you can just try to be patient,” she says, adding that she, too, still loves her hometown. “I am a proud horseman.”
