MASKED CULTURE

The annual Halloween Parade in New York City's Greenwich Village might be the closest thing to Carnival north of New Orleans. It's a wild rumpus, where inhibitions flee and true selves come out of the closet. In the Village, traditional Halloween ghoulishness mixes with drag-queen fabulousness and quite a bit of rough-trade leather and exposed (often pierced) body parts. Anthropologist Kugelmass (From a Ruined Garden, 1983) calls it ``a metaphor for the peculiar combination of chaos and creativity that characterizes daily life in New York City.'' Kugelmass has combined interviews of participants and spectators with full-color photographs of the parade taken by Mariette Pathy Allen, Elijah Cobb, Harold Davis, Lauren Piperno, and Marilyn Stern. The photos, all taken at night, capture the pagan abandon of the parade.