Who says we can’t have some sweet news these days?
Three years ago, the real-estate firm Zillow said SF tied for the top U.S. city where kids could score massive amounts of tooth-rotting candy on Halloween.
The reason for the accolade: San Francisco is chock-full of single-family homes with rich residents doling out full-size Whatchamacallits. It was enough to make a YIMBY dentist’s head explode.
With COVID, three years ago feels like three decades. The city’s health department is now strongly suggesting that San Franciscans keep the wrappers on typical festivities. That’s big news for a city that treats Halloween like a national holiday.
Residents of Belvedere Street, who host one of the city’s most perennially popular trick-or-treat parties, are heeding the suggestion. There will be no trick-or-treating or street party this year.
Instead, they’re putting their Halloween cash toward more urgent fare, donating their usual expenditures to the SF-Marin Food Bank and calling it Candy to Carrots.
The four blocks of Belvedere between Parnassus and 17th Streets in Cole Valley have more than 60 residences. The median home value in Cole Valley is $1.74 million, according to Zillow. So there should be plenty of money to divert to the food bank.
Laura Myers, who broached the idea to the neighborhood email list in late September, is giving $300. Sandra Norberg and Richard Drake are donating the $300 to $400 they usually spend on honey sticks. Another family likes to build a stage and scenery based on popular kids musical movies and hire people to do the dance routines. Someone else pays for a band.
Though it’s only the first week of October, the neighbors are already closing in $40,000, thanks in large part to a triple-your-pledge grant that Delta Dental had been offering. “That’s an enormous amount,” says the food bank’s annual fund coordinator Sylvia Nguyen.
It’s just a coincidence that shifting cash away from candy has triggered a matching grant from the dental industry, says Dean Engel, a hedge fund manager who is coordinating the Belvedere donations. They’re not done: They’ll collect donations until October 30 and announce the final total on Halloween.
Before the pandemic, 20 percent of residents in San Francisco and Marin were at risk of hunger, according to the food bank, which served 32,000 households per week. During COVID, its food deliveries have jumped by 50 percent to 60,000 households — some 1.3 million meals — a week.
Every dollar buys two meals, says Nguyen, which means the Belvedere donations have already paid for 80,000 meals, about 6 percent of a week’s total for the food bank.
Like street closures, outdoor dining parklets, and other aspects of pandemic life, could carrots not candy be the order of the day for years to come? “We haven’t discussed doing it annually, but we have pondered how to get broader participation,” says Engel.
Nguyen notes she’s not aware of other SF groups working on Halloween fundraisers. The Frisc did a spot check of other hot-spot neighborhoods. In Sunnyside, north of City College, there will be no Jack-o-Lantern Stroll or pumpkin-carving contest at the Conservatory, reports Sunnyside Neighborhood Association secretary Amy O’Hair.
In West Portal, residents on Wawona Street usually close two blocks for trick-or-treating; for a decade, everyone did a Harry Potter theme. Nothing of the sort this year, unfortunately. Greater West Portal Neighborhood Association president Tom Kanaley says residents and merchants will likely funnel Halloween activities into helping seniors and other at-risk neighbors.
Alex Lash is editor in chief of The Frisc.
