Who Sets Bed-Stuy's Halloween Hours? The Blocks Do

The first Bed-Stuy street to close to cars this Saturday will do it at 8 a.m. The last ones open at 4:30 p.m. Between those two times, six groups each picked their own hours: block associations, a merchants association, a business improvement district and a neighborhood nonprofit. No city office sets a start time for Halloween in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The neighbors decide it, one street at a time, and file it with the Department of Transportation.

Some families will come out at noon and others at dusk. The groups chose different hours, so a child in a costume can spend the afternoon moving from one closed street to the next.

The schedule as filed with the city

NYC DOT's Trick-or-Streets schedule lists every street approved to close to traffic for Halloween across the five boroughs. These are the Bed-Stuy entries for Saturday, October 31, 2026, sorted by start time.

The windows vary a lot. Macon Street and Verona Place are filed for twelve hours. Madison Street and the Throop-to-Tompkins stretch of Jefferson Avenue are filed for three and a half. The streets are spread out too. Madison and Macon sit near the western edge by Nostrand. Tompkins and the TNT block of Jefferson are in the middle. The 700 block of Jefferson is out by Malcolm X Boulevard. Every one of these closures comes from a group that applied for it.

Noon belongs to the merchants

The first big change in the day comes on Tompkins Avenue. The Tompkins Avenue Merchants Association's October bulletin says "Tompkins Trick or Streets" will open the avenue to trick-or-treating from noon to 7 p.m., and it's asking for volunteers to help run it. The two blocks between Gates Avenue and Halsey Street are a commercial strip, so the city's filing has a merchants group holding the street through the early afternoon. The residential blocks nearby open hours later. That is also the only daytime window on the Bed-Stuy list after Macon Street's all-day closure.

At 3 p.m., Marcy Avenue Plaza becomes the second business-run stop. The Bed-Stuy Gateway BID's Trick Or Streets listing on Patch describes a candy scavenger hunt for children, with free candy, books, tote bags and raffle prizes. Children 12 and under must come with an adult. The plaza sits between Fulton Street and MacDonough Street. The BID filed for 3 to 7 p.m., which overlaps the end of the Tompkins window and the start of the evening blocks.

The 700 Jefferson Avenue Block Association opens its stretch from Patchen Avenue to Malcolm X Boulevard at the same hour. That's an hour and a half before the other two residential evening blocks, on Madison Street and the TNT stretch of Jefferson, close to cars.

4:30 is when the brownstone blocks take over

At 4:30 p.m. the day turns into what most people think of as Halloween night. Jefferson Avenue between Throop and Tompkins and Madison Street between Nostrand and Bedford both close to cars then and stay closed until 8. A separate listing for the 20th Annual Bed-Stuy Trick-or-Treat Block Map, run by a group called Bed-Stuy Halloween Blocks, uses the same 4:30 to 8 p.m. window. The listing gives the date as Saturday, October 31 but doesn't print a year, and its location still reads "to be announced," so confirm with the organizer before you plan a route around it.

Some blocks don't need a permit to fill up. The Brooklyn trick-or-treat guide from Brooklyn Bridge Parents names Putnam, Monroe and Quincy Avenues between Throop and Tompkins as Bed-Stuy trick-or-treat blocks. Those three blocks run parallel to Jefferson, just north of the TNT stretch, so it's easy to walk from one to the other in the same evening.

Over on Lewis Avenue, the evening's main show starts at the same hour. Masquerade on Macon is back outside Macon Library for a ninth year. Brownstoner reports that this year's production is called "Season of the Witch":

"For the ninth year, volunteer performers will bring a creepy theatrical thrill to a stage outside of the Macon Library."

The first performance is at 4:30 p.m., the show repeats about every 30 minutes until 8, and it goes on rain or shine. It's free. The library is at 361 Lewis Avenue at Macon Street. Since the show repeats every half hour, families don't have to be there at a set time. You can catch a performance between blocks whenever it fits.

The Halsey, Ralph & Howard Community Garden at 774 Halsey Street is filling a similar gap. According to its NYC Parks event listing, the garden's stewards are giving out free candy from 4 to 7 p.m. Neither Herbert Von King Park nor Fulton Park has anything on its Parks calendar for October 31. Von King's Halloween-season programming fell on October 24, with a sugar-skull workshop, a Día de Muertos celebration and a screening of Coco. Our summer look at Von King Park covers the rest of its year.

The Stuyvesant Heights crawl and its tradition

The Stuyvesant Heights Parents Association Halloween Crawl has long been one of the biggest events of the night. Last year, its 22nd, the 2025 Patch listing advertised more than 250 houses across 20 blocks. There was a photo booth at 374 MacDonough Street from 5 p.m., and a dance party and costume contest on MacDonough between Lewis Avenue and Marcus Garvey Boulevard from 7 to 9 p.m. In 2024 the crawl started at Fulton Park, 70 Chauncey Street.

Those are last year's details and the year before's. If you plan to follow the crawl on Saturday, get this year's start point, hours and route directly from the parents association. The crawl's size depends on hundreds of households each deciding to open their door, and no permit table captures that. It's the same neighbor-run tradition behind the Brownstoners' house tour, which has kept homeowners hosting in their own rooms for decades.

Thursday comes first

Two events on Thursday, October 29, start the weekend early.

1. Family-Fun Halloween Movie Night at Macon Library, 5 to 7 p.m. The Brooklyn Public Library listing says it's for all ages, with snacks and a movie picked by vote, and costumes are encouraged.
2. Vampire in Brooklyn Night at Brooklyn Tea, 411 Lewis Avenue, 7 p.m. Patch's Brooklyn Halloween roundup lists tea cocktails, trivia, light bites, a costume contest and a film screening.

Both are on Lewis Avenue, a few doors from each other, and they make an easy Thursday evening for families and then grown-ups. Two days later, the same corner hosts Masquerade on Macon.

Reading Saturday by the clock

Macon Street and Verona Place are open to foot traffic from morning to night. Tompkins Avenue runs from noon to 7. Marcy Avenue Plaza and the far end of Jefferson Avenue join at 3. At 4:30, Madison Street, the TNT stretch of Jefferson, the Macon Library stage and the trick-or-treat block map all start together. Most of these windows close at 7 or 8 p.m. Families with young children will find the most going on from 3 to 7. Older trick-or-treaters can stay out on Macon, Verona, Madison and the TNT block of Jefferson until 8.

If you're heading just over the line, the Society for Clinton Hill's annual Halloween Safety Walk takes over Waverly Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby from 5 to 9 p.m. It's the latest-running closure nearby. Our Bed-Stuy neighborhood page covers the blocks around these streets for the rest of the year.

Every stop on Saturday's schedule was organized by neighbors, merchants or volunteers, and that's the side of Bed-Stuy we work in every day at The Dima Lysius Team. If your block is thinking about putting its own street on next year's schedule, or you just want to talk about the blocks you walked on Saturday, we'd be glad to hear from you. Contact Us.