Check out my Halloween costume this year: the Soul Train.
I’m pretty proud of myself for conceiving of and executing this year’s costume. Every year I try and challenge myself in some new way. This year it was all about coming up with a dramatic reveal and a participatory costume. My concept was to be a mystery train that turns into the Soul Train, and it went almost totally to plan.
The idea was to test it out at the skating rink on Tuesday night for our All Skate Halloween Party. And then do the more grand reveal at the KQED staff Halloween party on Wednesday, October 30.
But first I had to make the dang thing.
I suck at crafting, so I really struggled every bit of making the train, from the artwork to the structure to the lighting. I wanted something that involved minimal purchases and was composed of mostly materials I had on hand at home or at work. So card board boxes, duct tape, string lights, binder clips, etc. It took some iterating to get to the final product, which was honestly a little janky, but it did the job!
The easiest part was baking the “train tickets” to use as bribes for the costume contest judges. I don’t really know how to decorate, but even I can ice some decent letters!
The performance aspect was a little stressful but a lot of fun. I arranged with the party organizers to go last in the order of contestants, and I had a song ready for them to cue up: “Love Train by the O’jays. I had help from a couple of kind colleagues to execute the dramatic reveal.
So when it came down to the actual reveal, I was so ready. I grabbed the mic and asked the crowd “What is the funkiest train around?”
And a bunch of them shouted out, “The SOUL Train!”
Then I revealed the full costume, turned on the lights, and skated around the room. It was so dang glorious. Especially when a few brave folks from the crowd jumped in and danced around with me! Llke… a soul train.
