My Day on Tour: New York City on Halloween

by Jennifer Walsh

10 a.m.: I woke up in New York City to the view of the Chrysler Building outside the window of our apartment. I arrived yesterday with Jason, PETA's youth outreach coordinator, for a test run of an anti-fur demo using skinned rabbits and mink fur. Since the demo yesterday went so well, I was excited to see what today would bring. I got dressed wearing my PETA T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

11 a.m.: We went to have a snack at Café Atlas, the best vegan soft serve ice cream shop in the world! I had vanilla with cranberries and a mint brownie (also vegan!).

11:30 a.m.: We stopped into MooShoes, a vegan shoe store, to deliver some posters, leaflets, and stencils for activists to use during the fur season. We left graphic posters of skinned foxes that said, "Fur: No skin off your back" and cute posters with a couple of raccoons that said, "Two good reasons not to wear fur." We also did a little shopping while we were there, because MooShoes carries one-of-a-kind vegan things. I got a faux leather black purse with a pink star.

12 p.m.: We went back to the apartment to create a plan for the day. We had brought costumes for a demo on Monday, and we decided they would be perfect to wear as we handed out vegetarian and fur information to people at the Halloween parade. But we needed a few accessories to perfect our look.

1:30 p.m.: We hit the streets again. New York is a hard place to shop for costumes on the day of Halloween. There was a 45-minute wait to get into most stores. We finally got some lettuce, shoes, a shirt, and green fishnet stockings.

5 p.m.: We hurried home and got ready for the night. I dressed up as a caveperson, wearing a skirt and shirt covered with mink fur and holding a bloody mink piece hanging from a leghold trap. The fur was real mink that had been donated to PETA. Jason wore another donated fur coat with fake blood and a body screen showing footage of the awful conditions that animals endure before being made into coats. Jannette, PETA's executive director, was dressed as a "Lettuce Lady," wearing little more than a bikini with green fabric and mock lettuce leaves attached. Jannette bobby pinned lettuce into her hair for a fuller lettuce effect.

8 p.m.: We took a cab to Greenwich Village and stood on the corner to catch spectators at the 30th annual Village Halloween Parade. We grabbed people’s attention with the video and costumes, and we handed out about 300 leaflets and 200 business card-size leaflets in two hours. Everyone who passed noticed us and saw at least a snippet of the video. People were even taking pictures with us as though we were famous.

10 p.m.: We went to a party in Greenwich Village at the house of one of PETA's donors. We mingled and handed out even more information. The party was "costume optional," which meant that only about four other people had costumes on, and we really stuck out!

11:45 p.m.: We had a very late dinner at Veg-City Diner in Manhattan. This restaurant only serves vegetarian food, and the desserts are vegan. The line to get in was long, so we chatted with people and let them know about our demo on Monday in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to protest Jean-Paul Gaultier, a notorious fur designer. Everyone kept asking why I was wearing a fur costume in a vegetarian restaurant and telling Jannette how much they loved her Lettuce Lady costume. When we finally got a table, I had French fries and vegan garlic mashed potatoes (I'm Irish, and I love potatoes!).

2.a.m.: We made it home and got some much-needed sleep. Nothing beats a typical day on tour with PETA!

On PETA:

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