bixbyhalloween The second annual Bixby Park Halloween Carnival arrived at 11 on Saturday morning (Oct. 29), putting it right on the schedule that second-annual anythings are supposed to keep—a year after the first.

The four-hour event was still a rather simple affair, the crowds consisting mostly of  neighbors and Friends of Bixby Park, a grass-roots group that itself is comprised of nearby residents, neighborhood associations and businesses.

It wasn’t intended to be compared to the  weekend of major-league mayhem that went on downtown, which was swarming with zombie wannabes, comic-book geeks and a rarefied bunch of thrill/death/publicity seekers jumping off the roof of the 16-story Hyatt Regency.

Amusement options at the Bixby Park Halloween Carnival included all kinds of carnival games, as well as a Halloween costume contest, a home-carved-and-decorated pumpkin contest, scary arts-and-crafts and an Edgar Allen Poe-try Contest. Har! Tickets to the carnival games were 50 cents each and contest entries were $2—oh, and there was one of those inflatable bouncers, which cost a buck to enter.

In other words, the second annual Bixby Park Halloween Carnival was a lot like the first one. Organizers kept most of the things that worked last year, improved upon a few of them and added a few more … such as food trucks!

Yep, those erstwhile roach coaches, gussied-up with fancy paint jobs and gourmet cooks, that are becoming the same kind of ubiquitous presence at community events as the 10k race once was. The lineup Saturday: Crazy Creole Cafe, Mandoline Grill, Slapfish, Curbside Cravings, Canter’s, Grilled Cheese Patrol, Macho Nacho, Chunk n Chip, and Atomic Café.

All in all, the second annual Bixby Park Halloween Carnival was promising. Its second-annual status set up some of the conditions, such as momentum and rhythm, which are essential if it’s ever to evolves into that life force called tradition.

But in the case of this particular Halloween Carnival at this particular park, which is surrounded by neighborhoods that are particularly unparticular—it’s inhabited by just about every kind of somebody from nearly every social and economic strata—the here-and-now benefits of this first consistency test are probably as valuable as whatever reward may eventually come in the way-away of whenever.

Although firmly ensconced as an icon of Long Beach history, more recently Bixby Park has not been the kind of place that most people want to come back to. As its facilities suffered from age and lack of maintenance, its grounds began to fill with the human evidence of these difficult economic times—people who may be unemployed or homeless or addicted or mentally ill or simply lost.

In less than two years of its own hard work and the cajoling of city officials, Friends of Bixby Park has engendered startling improvements to Bixby Park’s infrastructure and ambiance. Thanks to the Parks and Rec Department and Supervisor Don Knabe, there’s more startling to come.

Meanwhile, the second annual Bixby Park Halloween Carnival provides good practice for not only people who live near the park, but people throughout Long Beach. It gets them accustomed to coming to Bixby Park. It gets them accustomed to coming back.

 Bixby Park is located on the corner of 1st and Junipero Streets in Long Beach—between Broadway and Ocean Blvd.. Proceeds from the Halloween Carnival  will be used for new park furnishings.