Greg Wood

Dean and Jess Markwell invoke the spirits of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love on Halloween at Urban Bar.

Greg Wood

An anonymous Gumby contemplates menace with a machete during Urban Bar's Halloween festivities.

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Halloween is bigger than ever. Literally.

In fact, Reuters just reported recently that Halloween-related sales in 2009 set record-breaking levels despite the fact that (a) we’re in an enormous economic recession and (b) just about every major media source has spent the past month reporting that Halloween sales would be down.

Reuters also points out that Halloween sales have increased 48.5 percent over the past four years. There’s a reason for this, and it’s more than evident here in town.

People in their 20s just can’t seem to let Halloween go. We went Trick Or Treating as children in the 80s and 90s and, as we reach so-called adulthood, we’re actually taking Halloween more seriously than ever before. Trick or Treating has been replaced with bar-hopping. We can show our costumes off to more people that way.

If you’ve ever hit the town on Halloween, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Halloween in Knoxville is enormous. The UT student body seems to put more effort into designing a witty, clever and original costume than they put into their academic studies.

I have a friend who constructed a Towlie (of “South Park”) costume which protrudes significantly off of his body. He can’t get through most doors very easily. Yet, he managed to get into Urban Bar two years ago, where he not only won their costume competition but elicited chants of “Towlie, Towlie, Towlie!” by everyone at the bar for roughly three minutes after being announced winner.

At New Amsterdam, a popular college-student bar, I saw two men dressed in the wacky orange and green suits from the film Dumb and Dumber swordfighting with their canes, just as the characters do in the ballroom scene.

Clans of Wizard of Oz characters, former US presidents, dead rock stars, living rock stars, UT coaches, cartoon characters. These are just some of the many, many costumes that abound yearly.

Some people take it a step beyond, including all sorts of props with their costumes, or adding modifiers. For example, throw on some gray makeup and some fake blood and suddenly your JFK costume becomes Zombie JFK. Or throw on a green wig and suddenly you’re punk rock Jesus.

It happens every year.

As if that isn’t enough fun for one night, these people drag Halloween out for an entire weekend, at the very least, and businesses seem to be catching on. The bars on the Strip usually see costumes from around Oct. 28 through Halloween night. Ray’s ESG had a costume contest the night before Halloween. Even TGI Friday’s had discounts for people in costume which started on Oct. 29.

This ridiculous behavior isn’t just supported in Knoxville, it’s clearly encouraged.

Even though the Old City didn’t have the Halloween blowout that they did last year, the same number of people seemed to be in the area. Urban Bar was packed with 20-somethings in costume. Even the bartenders dressed up. It was the headquarters of my generation refusing to let go of Halloween.

Either way, Urban Bar is one of the best venues in town to celebrate any occasion, with their modest drink prices, ample seating room and internet jukebox. Not surprisingly, it delivered on Halloween.