Oh, no.

It's that time again! Time for that thing you've all been fearing. The thing that comes every year right about now. It's... it's... The Event than WILL NOT DIE!  No, not the annual visit from your West Virginia relatives. It's time for the annual Nyack Halloween Parade! Most importantly, this will be the 25th anniversary of the parade, in which hundreds of floats, ghouls, bands, skaters, wild costumes, stiltwalkers, puppets and political candidates stagger and lurch through the streets of Nyack NY this coming Saturday, October 27th.

Nyack's is the state's largest Halloween parade this side of New York City, with around 20,000 onlookers expected. One of the favorite groups returning to march from last year's event are the 15-foot tall puppets, worked by Nyack’s own Amazing Grace Circus. Also marching are  five of Rockland County’s award-winning high school marching bands, the Suburbia Roller Derby skaters of Westchester, the H.O.G. motorcycle club, the Hudson Vagabond Puppets, hook and ladder fire companies from around Rockland, and unicyclists and stilt walkers from the Amazing Grace Circus. And of course there'll be hundreds of hooligans dressed in costumes from scary to silly.

The event starts at 3:00 pm with live music in the Riverspace municipal parking lot. At 5:30, the parade begins from Memorial Park, at the corner of Depew Street and Piermont Avenue. Then this lumbering collection of zombies, ghouls and fire department volunteers proceeds south on Piemont Avenue, then turns west onto Cedar Hill Avenue. The parade then turns north on Broadway to Main Street, and winds its way to the Halloween Stage set up in the municipal parking lot at Riverspace. After the parade, an awards ceremony will be held for the marchers, followed by live music, a buffet and dancing in the streets. (Well, in the parking lot anyway.) So come for the spectacle and stay for the band. I'll be the one dressed up in a sheet! Sooo...scaaary!

Contact Carlo Pellegrini, the Nyack Chamber’s Halloween organizer, at 845-721-5059 for additional parade information, or go to http://www.nyackchamber.org.