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Madison Halloween, Halloween Madison: On-going coverage from Dane101

Submitted by Jesse Russell on Mon, 2005-10-31 16:17

Welcome to Halloween 2005, if you are looking for Madison Halloween 2006 coverage and information, just click here. Thanks for coming!

In this entry you will find all the links to you need to blogs, news stories and photo galleries concerning our most sacred of holidays - HALLOWEEN!!!

If you want to find all of our stories that mention Halloween in Madison 2005 so far this year, just click on Halloween in our category section (or right here).

Monday, 11:48 a.m.
Notes from the Underground provides links to some blogs focused on what the Main Stream Media (MSM) is missing (including us, thanks!). New photogallery on Flickr from Yorba Girl (many more blogs and photos down below in readmoreland).

Monday, 1 a.m.
The blogs and photo galleries have really started rolling in now. Below is a list. Make sure to scroll down this entire entry for comments from Ann Althouse and Paul Soglin, as well as other blogs and photo galleries that were able to get online earlier in the day.

First up, EndThe.MadisonRiots.com has some video.

Photo Galleries and Blogs with Photos:
On Flickr mbimotmog has a very solid gallery of the police and some great costumes (including two of my favorites: Tron and Tetris. Also see the My Brain Is Made Of Things Made Of Gold blog).
Much more below the fold...

Also see BadgerChris, mkemichael , ruthwelles, and more from Ballroom and Chuckdawg (we linked to them earlier).

The State Journal now also has a photo gallery up (the Cap Times had one up earlier yesterday).

A photo gallery on MSN from Heather's Pics and ramblings

A list of blogs discussing Halloween in Madison or recounting (mostly State Street) experiences:
The Uncredible Hallq
Behind Those Green Eyes
kit.schy has a solid photo gallery of costumes.
So Do You Know Matt Cole? - photos here.
Yeah, You Know - with photos
Susan's Space
Miss Julie
Biased Perception: How the Media Makes me Want to Change
Annis27 - may have photos later
Hott or Not!?!
Thomas Flynn
Life and Times of Jon Williams
Aaron's Football Blog - some photos
Headspace
Mack Tight blog
Madison Radio Girl
It's Always Something
Express your Beauty
Housecoat

And a reminder to check out the coverage from Kristian on the Daily Page.

Sunday, 3:20 p.m.
The debate over what exactly happened Saturday night has begun. Was it the police, was it the costumed or was it a combination of both?

Or does it all just depend on the media you read? The Architectural Dance Society has an interesting compare and contrast of the Wisconsin State Journal write-up and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel write-up:

Quote:
It's rather astonishing how different the two reports are, in both tone and content. Reading the Wisconsin State Journal, you'd get the impression that police were forced to resort to teargas only after a few diehard partiers refused to leave the scene - whereas the Journal Sentinel report paints the cops as pre-emptive warriors, teargassing the crowds and locking them in the bars before they even had a chance to disperse.

Letters in a Bottle has an entry about how things went down, but says last night doesn't qualify as a "riot."

Quote:
There was a long period of time in which the "party" could easily have become a riot, but the police seemed to have it in hand. In fact, when they split their forces so that they didn't leave a vaccuum on either side of the street, they really seemed to have control of the situation. The riot cops seemed extremely heavy-handed. But that was the method the police chose this year for preventing a riot.

Vast Dairy State Conspiracy hints at potential grounds for a class-action suit:

Quote:
apparently the Madison police went bonkers, randomly, with teargas. The article doesn't even attempt at balance -- second sentence: "The crowd didn't even have the opportunity to disperse peacefully."

I'd like to hear the other side of this, if there is one -- because if there isn't, this just sounds to me like a lawsuit waiting to happen. I don't think you're allowed to pre-emptively control a crowd by assaulting them with a painful weapon for the sheer hell of it.

Letter in a Bottle also has photos.
The Cap Times now has photos up in a very bloggy looking photo gallery structure.

More Flickr photo galleries are up: Agnostic Taoist, jkerman, and in case you missed one of the best rock shows in Madison featuring the Hold Steady, the Constatines and Thunderbirds are Now! because you were celebrating Halloween - Stephaniesays has some pictures. Dane101 will have a review of the show tomorrow.

Madison Central High School Class of 1965 also has comments on Halloween.

Sunday, 11:04 a.m.
Two notable Madison bloggers, former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and Ann Althouse, weigh-in. Soglin says the city has begun to get control over Halloween events, but says there are issues that deserve year round attention.

Quote:
Ever since Alderman Mike Verveer, Commissar of Recreation and entertainment convinced Mayor Sue Bauman to end police raids on private house parties in 1997, problems worsened. For a fairly good history of the party check out the Badger Herald. It accurate except for Verveer's explanation as to why it was revived in 1997.

The growing culture of out-of-control, underage drinkers has given Madison and the UW an unprecedented reputation for alcohol abuse. So long as that reputation continues, Halloween will set expectations for visitors that lead to property damage and too many cases of alcohol poisoning.

Althouse also suggests that Halloween was a reasonable success:

Quote:
With 100,000 people on the street at midnight and apparently no significant property damage -- in previous years store windows were broken -- it seems as though it was. Surely, the police are entitled to clear a huge crowd at some point, and the pepper spray was used on the folks who insisted on coming back. It seems to me, based on this article, that both the crowd and the police did a nice job.

Sunday, 8:50 a.m.
When it comes to news coverage of last night's Halloween festivities and "riots", Kristian at the Daily Page beats all traditional media hands down. Here pre-pepper spray, the events leading up to and during the pepper spray, a photo gallery of the 100,000 attendees and five short movies of State Street being cleared.

As for local media, the Wisconsin State Journal has an article.

Bloggers also weigh-in:

Chloe at Andonigo unleashes emotion in a stream-of-conciousness fashion. She puts much of the blame on the police:

Quote:
it was totally not crowded and the police in horrendous riot gear started standing their ground in lines blocking people from different places. so we moved when the horses came at us. no one was doing anything was the point. i get that they want to keep riots from happening, but they fucking started all the shit. i saw a couple sprays and shoves and each one was started by the cop. it's like telling your kids not to hit anyone, then spanking them. WHAT THE FUCK? they fucking instigated the physical shit and were so determined to win their fucking battle (that wasn't there until they created it).

Stephanite at Unitiled Undecided managed to leave before the pepper spray started, but she links to a paper she wrote for her criminology class last here after she was. She asks this important question:

Quote:
The central difference, from my vantage point, from Friday to Saturday was the change in mood for Halloween goers and policemen. What is it that changes happy-go-lucky, playful, partiers into destructive, disgraceful rioters and friendly, easygoing policemen into angry, pepper-spray crazy antagonists?

Flickr has some photo galleries up from Chuckdawg and Ballroom.

Saturday, 11:05 a.m.
We have added a photo gallery from last night. Click here for pictures of Beeker, Rick James, MC Hammer, the Prince of the Cosmos from Katamari Damacy, Link, Santa, Austin Powers and Madison police confiscating toy guns from both Osama Bin Laden and a cowboy.

Blog update, Shelby's Soup Shack has given a perspective of State Street last night, "What they say about halloween here seems to be pretty accurate. And that was only friday and apparently the "best" is yet to come. My friend got arrested when we had only been on state street for no more than 10 minutes, so we don't really know where he is."

AP reports: "About 180 people were arrested during the first night of Madison's annual State Street Halloween bash, but no major disturbances were reported, police said."

Saturday, 9:32 a.m.
Local media is suggesting that the numbers on State Street last night hit around 20,000. Both the Cap Times and Wisconsin State Journal have reports of a festive, but calm scene on State.

Dane101 concurs. We only witnessed one shout down by police around 2 a.m. and a handful of “weapons” confiscated including a toy gun from Osama Bin Laden and a cricket paddle made out of flimsy cardboard from Shaun of the Dead.

Kristian at the Isthmus spoke with Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and MPD Chief Wray before 11 p.m. last night while they strolled State Street. Kristian wrote his report from one of the best spots to observe State Street, WSUM. In an earlier report he posted some pictures of the city preparing.

All is quiet on the blog front. With the exception of one angry comment towards Mayor Dave for "ruining Halloween" on Zack's Blog. Little else has been said thus far on the "blogosphere" as we are sure Madisonians (and non-Madisonians) who may blog about last night’s happenings are probably still unconscious.

As for some of the costumes this year, the 80s are making a come back. We saw a large number of Mario and Luigis, three Rainbow Brites, one She-Ra, a Rubik’s Cube, Prince, Rick James, Beetle Juice and numerous Ghostbusters. The 90s had solid representation in the form of a spot-on MC Hammer who spent most of the night doing the Running Man up and down State Street. Some other costumes represented include Team Zissou, Batman, a nihilist from the Big Lebowski, Jayne from Firefly and of course the obligatory and wholly unoriginal penis full body costume.

Halloween in Madison 2005