Austin Halloween: Sixth Street Closes to Traffic on Saturday Night, and Freaky Deaky Fills the Expo Center All Weekend
Halloween falls on a Saturday for the first time in years, and Austin's plan is the big one: Sixth Street becomes a pedestrian costume party, downtown bars run their own parties, and the Expo Center hosts a two-day festival.
Sixth Street is the center of Austin's Halloween on Saturday night. The Austinot Halloween Day guide, read by this desk Friday, says the stretch from Brazos Street to the I-35 frontage road closes to traffic from 6 p.m. on October 31, turning the street into a free, walk-in costume party, with live music spilling out of the bars. Its parties guide adds the practical advice: get there before 9 p.m. if you want to move easily, expect the biggest crowds between 9 p.m. and midnight, leave the car at home, and use rideshare, pedicabs or scooters instead.
The bars run their own nights inside the street party. Austinot's guide puts individual bar covers generally at $10 to $30, with live music, DJs and costume contests, and organized bar crawls running downtown through the evening. After 11 p.m., its Halloween Day guide notes, the festivities are geared toward adults, and anyone under 17 should be headed home by then.
Downtown is not the only draw. Freaky Deaky, the Halloween electronic-music festival, runs October 30 and 31 at the Travis County Expo Center, according to the Lake Travis Zipline Halloween guide read this run — a second, separate crowd on the city's northeast side on both Friday and Saturday nights.
Drivers who are not going to either should treat Saturday night accordingly: Sixth Street and its cross streets downtown, and the Expo Center approaches in the evening, are places to route around, not through. This desk will re-check the city's published closure plan before Saturday's drive files.
