Halloween, Oct. 31, is a day for children to dress up and trick-or-treat. But for me, Halloween was always a day to celebrate life and birth. Oct. 31, 2012 was my brother’s 21st birthday, but amid the chaos of relocating I was limited in my ways to celebrate his very special, landmark birthday.

However, for many New Yorkers, Halloween is no small event. For the past 38 years, New York and specifically the NYU community has been a part of the annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade. But at approximately 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 30, Mayor Michael Bloomberg informed the city that the parade was canceled – the first year in the parade’s history that it has not taken place.

“Unfortunately, we just cannot spare the manpower from the NYPD and other city agencies to host the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, so we are postponing it to a later date, sometime next week,” Mayor Bloomberg said in an statement to The Wall Street Journal. “We’ll work tomorrow and figure out what date makes sense, given the resources the city has.”

Jessica Stolzman, a sophomore in the Liberal Studies Program, celebrated the holiday in a unique way.

“I walked the Brooklyn Bridge,” Stolzman said. “Actually, I was just trying to get to Brooklyn to stay with my aunt, and the buses were slow so we decided to walk.”

Tisch junior Tatiana Weschler said she relocated uptown and was going to celebrate the holiday anyway.

“I think it