"Beloved Fort Greene Halloween tradition." That is how Greenlight Bookstore describes the Great PUPkin dog costume contest. The bookstore is building its 17th anniversary around it this Saturday, October 24, a full week before Halloween.
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, and borough-wide guides are treating October 31 as the main event. In Fort Greene, the events that belong most clearly to the neighborhood happen on October 24. They are run by the park conservancy, a dog group and a bookstore on Fulton Street. Halloween night itself is mostly hosted by BAM and by Clinton Hill organizations a few blocks east. Knowing which Saturday belongs to whom makes the end of October much easier to plan.
October 24 belongs to the park and to Fulton Street
The Fort Greene Park Conservancy's Halloween Fest runs Saturday, October 24, from noon to 4 p.m., with a rain date of Sunday, October 25. The program includes spooky stories, face painting and family games. It is free, with no RSVP required.
The first hour is the one dog owners plan around. From noon to 1 p.m., Fort Greene PUPS hosts the Great PUPkin Dog Costume Contest inside the festival, and watching is free with no registration. The contest's Eventbrite page, linked from Greenlight's announcement, bills this year's edition as the 28th annual.
The date overlap with Greenlight is not a coincidence the bookstore ignores. Greenlight sold its first book on October 16, 2009, and held its grand opening on October 24, 2009. Since its birthday lands on PUPkin day, the store is offering 10% off to anyone who comes into 686 Fulton Street with a dog in costume on Saturday. New merchandise also goes on sale that day: hoodies, travel mugs, and a new T-shirt and tote design celebrating the dogs of Brooklyn, made with local children's book artists.
Put together, the neighborhood's Halloween Saturday has a clear sequence. The contest ends at 1 p.m., and a dog still in costume earns a discount on Fulton Street the same afternoon.
How Saturday, October 24 lines up
| Time | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Fort Greene Greenmarket, year-round Saturday market | Washington Park between DeKalb and Willoughby Avenues |
| Noon to 1 p.m. | Great PUPkin Dog Costume Contest, hosted by Fort Greene PUPS | Fort Greene Park, inside Halloween Fest |
| Noon to 4 p.m. | Halloween Fest, rain date October 25 | Fort Greene Park |
| All day | Greenlight's 17th anniversary, 10% off with a costumed dog | 686 Fulton Street |
| Afternoon into evening | Beats for Treats block party | St. James Place between Gates and Greene Avenues |
The Greenmarket's listing shows its regular Saturday hours with no seasonal change, so the market runs alongside the festival's whole first half on the park's western edge.
Beats for Treats, organized by Saint James Joy, sits just over the line in Clinton Hill. Its event listing promises music, dancing, costumes and candy donations for neighborhood children. Published times differ. The Posh listing gives 1 to 7 p.m. A 2026 roundup from Patch says the street opens at noon with music from 2 to 7 p.m. Check before walking over.
Between the park and Fulton Street, DeKalb Avenue has a newer stop. Million Goods opened its second location at 201 DeKalb Avenue on September 10. Founders Drew Kaufmann and Matt Reyer combined a menswear shop, a low-intervention wine bar, a listening space and a garden, according to Time Out.
October 31 moves to BAM and to Waverly Avenue
A week later, the hosts change. BAM's annual family party, BAMboo!, runs Saturday, October 31, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Avenue, between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street. It is free and offers carnival games, arts and crafts, and candy giveaways. This year the activities run both indoors and outdoors.
After dark, the main event is on Waverly Avenue. NYC DOT's Trick-or-Streets list has Waverly Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby Avenues car-free from 5 to 9 p.m. for the Society for Clinton Hill's Annual Clinton Hill Halloween Safety Walk with Street Activities. The Society for Clinton Hill says a Halloween Walk committee organizes it every year and prepares a map for distribution. The walk has a long history. In a 2014 profile, 6sqft reported that it began in 1994 as a children's event, with a small group of homes handing out candy and maps passed out on Hall Street.
That evening competes with the whole borough. Now in its fifth year, Trick-or-Streets has 57 Brooklyn events in 2026. According to Brooklyn Bridge Parents, 40 of them fall on Halloween itself. That means about seven in ten of the borough's car-free Halloween events happen on a single Saturday evening. The same guide notes that a Saturday Halloween lets trick-or-treating start in daylight with no school night the next day.
The guide's Fort Greene and Clinton Hill routes for October 31 are:
- BAMboo! at 30 Lafayette Avenue, 2 to 5 p.m.
- Myrtle Avenue businesses.
- Clinton Avenue, Myrtle Avenue to Gates Avenue.
- St. James Place, DeKalb Avenue to Atlantic Avenue.
- Waverly Avenue, DeKalb Avenue to Willoughby Avenue, car-free 5 to 9 p.m.
Further east, the Grand Avenue Halloween Block Party runs 5 to 8 p.m. that night on Grand Avenue between Clifton Place and Greene Avenue. According to the Brooklyn Bridge Parents Halloween Guide, Private Picassos and Good People NYC are filling the block with trick-or-treating, inflatables, glow activities and a decorate-a-haunted-house table.
Seen together, the two Saturdays have different hosts. On October 24, neighborhood groups and a local shop set the schedule from Fort Greene Park and Fulton Street. On October 31, a cultural institution hosts the afternoon and Clinton Hill block organizations take the evening.
The weekdays in between
The week between the two Saturdays has its own events. Today, Thursday, October 22, FAB Fulton BID has Jitu Weusi Plaza on Putnam Avenue, between Fulton Street and Grand Avenue, on the Trick-or-Streets list from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Gates Avenue Plaza, between Vanderbilt Avenue and Fulton Street, follows on Friday, October 30, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.
BAM's adult programming also runs through the week. Hanif Abdurraqib's poetry program, I Guess It Was My Destiny to Live So Long, starts October 24, the same day as PUPkin, and runs through October 30 at venues across the BAM campus. On October 24, a day in the park can end with a poetry program a few blocks south.
After the costumes come down
Fort Greene Park's next volunteer event comes three weeks after Halloween Fest. The Conservancy's annual Leaf No Trace event is listed for Saturday, November 14, from 10 a.m. to noon. Halloween Fest takes place on the same park grounds the Conservancy asks volunteers to clean up in November.
Fulton Street also has more openings coming. FAB Fulton's August 31 neighborhood update said Laobra Cafe was working toward a fall opening at 664 Fulton Street. It also said Capiz, a Filipino bakery and restaurant, was preparing to open at Fulton Street and South Portland Avenue in the former Oma Grassa space. Neither had a firm date in that update. Both would sit a few doors from Greenlight, on the stretch where the October 24 walk ends.
If you walk the neighborhood looking at stoops this month, the brownstone blocks are worth a slower look. Our architecture lover's guide to Fort Greene streets explains how to tell the Greek Revival facades from the Italianate ones on a walk between the park and BAM.
At Mark O'Brien Real Estate, we restore the kind of Fort Greene brownstones that get decorated for October 24 and October 31. If you're thinking about the stoop, facade or parlor floor of your own house before next year's Halloween, book an appointment and we'll go through what that work involves.
