Halloween Carnaval 2013 - West Hollywood - Part III (of IV) - The Bad

I wanted to stay positive with this series of posts; however, knowing what happened at the Halloween Carnaval may help prevent it from happening to you in the future.  The Pulp Friction stage blocked just about half of Santa Monica Blvd, causing a bottleneck of people, shown in the photo below (this was shortly before things got over crowded and chaotic).

It later got so over filled with Halloweeners (made up that word) that it became difficult to get through the area.  That happened wherever there were stages and performances.  But it was worse for this one. Due to some type of emergency (see NOTE at end of this post), a person on the stage of Pulp Friction asked everyone in front of that stage to move to the other side of SM Blvd before they could continue the show.  I was just passing through (trying to, anyway, as I could barely move before that announcement).  At that point, things got pretty scary - people were pushing and shoving from behind, but no way to move forward in front.  A girl next to me got knocked down, luckily others helped her back up quickly, before others might have been pushed on top of her.  This reminded me of the incident with an escalator when people couldn't clear the bottom fast enough and several people got injured.  In this case there were too many people who felt that if they pushed and shoved hard enough they would get through.

What's the solution?  Better preparations for possible emergencies.  And perhaps enlarging the Carnaval area.

Well, anyway, that was the bad.  Now let's get back to the good and the beautiful, and some ugly, in the following of photos:

The above was not an entrance to a club, but rather, their "costume."  Pretty clever, no?

Not sure what was happening with this one, but it looked interesting, LOL.

The Sheriff was really a Sheriff.

Some of the costumes were pretty minimal.  Luckily, it wasn't too chilly out.

One more installment to come, and then that's it for Halloween 2013.  Hope you've enjoyed the views thus far.  Perhaps I'll get your photo next year (assuming the weather is good again, and I go).  As always, have a great time whatever you may be doing, and stay well.

NOTE (added Nov 5) - I found out the emergency was a person who caught fire, and later died.  The link to the story is here:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-halloween-burning-death-20131104,0,1901781.story#axzz2jpkuau00