Good walkable neighborhood for Trick or Treat?

[peestandingup]

Anyone have any ideas on which urban/walkable neighborhoods are good (and safe) for taking the kids for some old school door to door trick or treating? The suburban hoods around my place suck & you'd never know anything was going on. Which I personally think is a direct result of infrastructure & how these places are so disconnected now, but thats another topic.

Anyways, we've done the mall before, the Zoo, Disney, etc & I personally don't want to do that again because it seems pointless, and kinda sad IMO. Corporate-style trick or treating seems to be the norm now.

[fieldafm]

Anyone have any ideas on which urban/walkable neighborhoods are good (and safe) for taking the kids for some old school door to door trick or treating? The suburban hoods around my place suck & you'd never know anything was going on. Which I personally think is a direct result of infrastructure & how these places are so disconnected now, but thats another topic.

Anyways, we've done the mall before, the Zoo, Disney, etc & I personally don't want to do that again because it seems pointless, and kinda sad IMO. Corporate-style trick or treating seems to be the norm now.

Edgewood Avenue in Avondale.  Bar none.

[CityLife]

+1 for the Edgewood area. I've never done San Marco, but imagine the area south of the square is great for it too.

[Bill Hoff]

SPR has a ton of kids that make the rounds. The heyride became too large to handle, so they've set up a stationary trick or treating event at 7th & Market. I'd imagine Market, Hubbard, Silver, Laura, and Pearl would have a lot of houses with candy.

The main avenues of Avondale & San Marco, I'm sure, would be excellent.

[JaxNative68]

Selva Marina in Atlantic Beach is great.  Big spooky moss covered oak trees, dim street lights and a haunted house you can hear moaning from everywhere in the neighborhood.  The family that hosts the haunted house every year collects donations for a charitable cause, so bring some cash if you head that way.

[CityLife]

Selva Marina does seem like it would be cool. Old Atlantic Beach is another area I imagine would be excellent. Awesome houses, very dense and walkable.

[WmNussbaum]

If you come to the Avondale area after it gets dark, you'll probably find all the candy gone. You see, a lot of people from disadvantaged neighborhoods bus (literally - as in some big busses) in their kids and parents so that the area is inundated with T or T-ers, and the candy gets all doled out pretty soon. Like some of my neighbors, I respectfully decline to buy twice as much or more than I should have to in order to accommodate the hordes.

[peestandingup]

If you come to the Avondale area after it gets dark, you'll probably find all the candy gone. You see, a lot of people from disadvantaged neighborhoods bus (literally - as in some big busses) in their kids and parents so that the area is inundated with T or T-ers, and the candy gets all doled out pretty soon. Like some of my neighbors, I respectfully decline to buy twice as much or more than I should have to in order to accommodate the hordes.

Yikes, I didn't know that. And being bussed in is something I've never heard of. Thanks for the heads up about timing. And thank you all for the recommendations. Have some ideas now.

BTW, when are the official times in Jax? I can't find it anywhere. I'd imagine 6pm-8pm?

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

I wonder if one realizes the moment that they change from normal human to curmudgeonly old guy?

I don't think it's a pinpointed moment in time as it's a gradual, decay. 

Probably starts with complaints of loud music and girls' dresses being to short and then just devolves to eating dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon, driving 18 miles per hour below the speed limit in the left lane, and getting up to pee 4 times a night.

[fieldafm]

Yeah, screw this kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods!  I mean.. get a job!

It's no surprise this is the same person that also didn't want a kid-friendly restaurant like Mellow Mushroom in the neighborhood. 

[WmNussbaum]

I became a curmudgeon on March 4, 2011. I remember the date well - just have forgotten why.

I don't object to kid friendly pizza joints or real restaurants. I do object to a WalMart sized pizza joint in an area that historically housed only smaller eateries (hate that word - don't know why I used it) and shops.

I don't hate the Jaguars - just their record and the need for a dick extender a/k/a the world's biggest JUMBOTRON.

I do despise billboards. They contribute nothing to society. Hey Field, don't you already know who to call if you need a real good PI lawyer? Or is your memory so poor you won't remember that it's Eddie or Chuck or Bill or John a few months from now? Yeah, that's it. A few months from now you won't remember them and will have to look over at the billboards as you go 75 MPH along I-95 to figure out who to call. Or will you forget that Winn-Dixie sells groceries? Or when the rescue vehicle is taking you to Baptist, will you say, "No. I want to go to St. Caring." Bovine excrement, pal.

[fieldafm]

You're doing a great job proving everyone's points

[Gators312]

I can attest to Ortega Forest getting a numbers of "outsiders" at Halloween.  My best friend grew up in the Forest, and I always came in from rural Clay county for trick or treating.   I lived on Westfield for a few years in my 20s, and right past the tracks on Verona you would always see vans parked on Halloween. 

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

I became a curmudgeon on March 4, 2011. I remember the date well - just have forgotten why.

My guess.... it was a Friday.

[mtraininjax]

Edgewood Avenue in Avondale.  Bar none.

Since I live on Edgewood Avenue, I can tell you this Halloween, like others in the past, it was a madhouse. I purchased 362 Snickers bars, our friends from Fairfax Manor came and added their candy, and friends from Springfield did the same, what they saw shocked them.

The night of bribes, which is what I call it, so that my house and cars don't end up getting egged later, starts at dusk with the smaller kids in their cute costumes coming around and the parents are nice and respectful. These are the neighborhood kids, and they are kind and fun to see. Then around sunset, you start seeing the high schoolers in the neighborhood, still fun and with some mix of older, younger and infant still in a friendly manor. Then, when it gets dark, all hell breaks loose.

The bussed in kids and families of kids who's parents just got off work show up around 7 and the frantic dash begins. Our lot lines are 60-feet and so between Herschel and Oak, on Edgewood, you can get 7 homes on our East Side and 5 homes on the West side. So you can score 12 pieces in one block, or if you wife allows people from Fairfax Manor to be in charge, they feel bad for the youth who seem to get 2 pieces, they are unprepared for the kids of the night.

So we end up running out of candy at 7:53 PM, I was floored, we kept seeing people and kids, glow in the dark, kids in strollers, kids in football uniforms, kids in the arms of parents who were smoking, drinking and partying up and down Edgewood. Like waves in the ocean, you think its calm and can catch your breath when a new wave of 20 people turn the corner or a bus of kids empties at your door or block and waves of kids come across the median out of the darkness and into the light. It was nuts.

We had people come to us from Lakeshore, Springfield, Riverside, Fairfax Manor, not to mention all the other places where you don't ask where they came from, only happy to pass along the bribe and hope it works. We had a couple who worked in the public school system and lived in Riverside come see all the people and costumes up and down Edgewood, they were blown away with all the people.

One of our friends who lives on Oak Street, almost 1 block behind us said they never see what we see. Telfair Stockton would be proud of the grid of streets and the joy that Avondale provides to kids from all over Jacksonville. Now on to Christmas in Avondale and Luminaria, then a nice quiet break for 10 months until we get to do it all over again for another Halloween....