Glen Park's Halloween Has Outgrown the Households That Built It

"Last Halloween, I stopped counting after 1,500 people walked up our street to view our pumpkins," Charlie Vella told San Francisco Senior Beat in a 2025 profile, talking about Halloween 2024. That's a lot of visitors for one family's front steps on Sussex Street. It also explains why Glen Park's Halloween looks different this year.

The two biggest parts of Saturday night are the pumpkin display and car-free trick-or-treating on Chenery Street. Each began with a handful of households and has since outgrown them. In 2026 the organizers are asking neighbors to help: to carve in the Vellas' garage, to hold the barricades on Chenery and to keep the candy coming. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, so the whole neighborhood has the day.

From the Living Room to the Garage

In 2006, the Chronicle ran a feature on Charlie Vella and his younger daughter, Maya, carving pumpkins in their Glen Park living room while one of his horror films played. Back then, according to the Chronicle's article on SFGATE, he bought pumpkins at Safeway about 10 at a time. Over three or four days, the two of them carved 40 to 50, lit them with votive candles and set them on the porch and front stairs.

Here's what the Glen Park Association has announced for 2026:

The association says the family has been carving for 31 years, and that the display draws "hundreds of fans up the hill." Vella's own 1,500 count from Halloween 2024 suggests the crowd is bigger than that. One thing is new this year. Neighbors are invited to help carve in the days before Halloween, on October 28, 29 and 30.

Foam Lets the Display Grow

The jump from 50 pumpkins to 175 comes down to two kinds of pumpkin with very different shelf lives.

Real pumpkins don't last. Vella told Senior Beat that he carves the real ones four days before Halloween to stay ahead of mold. The Chronicle had the same story back in 2006: the one time the family started five days out, the first batch "just melted away" before the big day. That short window puts a ceiling on how many real pumpkins a family can carve in a year.

Foam pumpkins have no such limit. The Vellas started using them about five years before that 2025 profile. They carve them with a Dremel, and they can keep them from one year to the next. Here's the 2026 mix, per the association:

• 35 organic pumpkins, carved over the four days before Halloween night
• 40 foam pumpkins, newly carved this year
• 100 foam pumpkins saved from earlier years

So the display grows by adding foam pumpkins each year, while the fresh ones are still limited by those last four days before Halloween. That's exactly when the family has opened the garage to neighbors. For the designs, Vella described a method he borrowed from Renaissance mural painters. "You take a drawing, painting, or photo, 8 X 11, tape it to the pumpkin, take a sharp pin, and outline the image, using a permanent magic marker to connect the pin prinks," he told Senior Beat. The 2026 photos on the association's page show pumpkins titled Moonlit Fox, Wood Man and Japanese Fan Woman.

As this post goes out, October 29 and 30 are still open for carving. The garage workshop only fits a few extra people at a time, so the family asks you to RSVP first. You can call Charlie at 415-939-6175 or email [email protected], and the association will connect you. Bring your own organic or foam pumpkin.

Chenery Runs on a Grant, Volunteers and Donated Candy

On Chenery Street, the same growth happened at street scale. The Glen Park Association calls Haunted Chenery an "organically grown event." Its safety measures came later.

The barricades are paid for by a grant from the Civic Joy Fund, which lets the association close the street again this year. The grant doesn't cover people. Volunteers still have to staff the closure and help drivers who need to get out or get home. Shifts last 90 minutes and start at 4:30 p.m. The street closes from 5 to 8:30 p.m., and shifts end by 9 p.m. Trick-or-treating runs from 5 to 9. To sign up for a shift, email [email protected].

The candy has its own system. The association points out that the households on Chenery put up with "a significant amount of inconvenience" on Halloween and hand out a lot of candy. To share the load, it asks neighbors to drop off extra bags at Critter Fritters, 670 Chenery Street. From there, the shop's "Critter-in-Chief" Tony and his helpers deliver the donations to houses along Chenery.

That makes three separate jobs: barricades paid for by a nonprofit grant, the closure staffed by volunteers and the candy supply topped up through a pet shop on the block. Each one moves a cost off the households that ended up hosting the night.

Saturday, October 31, by the Clock

Here's how the day lines up for anyone in Glen Park:

1. 9 a.m. to noon: Glen Park Gravel. This Crosstown Trail walk covers a hilly 3-mile loop on what the organizers call some of the city's best examples of real dirt roads. They date to the late 1800s through the 1920s, when the neighborhood had a few dairy farms. Double Cross co-founders Arnie Thompson and John Trevithick lead it, starting at Glen Park BART Plaza, 2901 Diamond Street. Glen Park historian Evelyn Rose of the Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project will add highlights, according to the association. The Luma listing showed the walk as sold out with a waitlist.
2. 4:30 p.m.: First volunteer shift on Chenery.
3. 5 p.m.: Chenery closes to cars and Haunted Chenery starts.
4. Dusk: The Vella pumpkins light up on Sussex Street and stay lit until 11 p.m.
5. 8:30 p.m.: Chenery reopens to cars. Trick-or-treating officially wraps up at 9.

The two-hour gap between Chenery wrapping up and the pumpkins going dark is the easiest window to see the Vella display without the early-evening crowd.

For adults, there's Glen Park Station at 2816 Diamond Street. SFGATE reported in 2024 that it was the only bar of any kind in the neighborhood. It traces back to 1926. The association noted that the bar would celebrate its 100th anniversary on October 17, and its Walktober post calls it the neighborhood's "living room." It's the same pattern as the rest of this post. A Glen Park place reached its centennial this month because people kept coming back, including after a 2024 flood closed the bar for two months.

The Next Ask Comes a Week Later

The association isn't the only group asking neighbors to pitch in. On November 7, San Francisco Public Works holds its District 8 Beautification Day. Glen Park Beautiful is recruiting volunteers to clear the last of the invasive ivy and spruce up the Glen Park School side of the Bosworth Pedestrian Bridge. Children are welcome. When you register through Mobilize, enter "Bosworth Team" in the Organization field.

Glen Park Beautiful is also working with artist Dana Albany on a mosaic mural for the back of the courtyard next to Pono Boutique. Glen Park Beautiful scheduled a community comment meeting at the Glen Park library on October 21 for Albany to share her first draft. The mural adds to the association's tally of Glen Park's murals, its tiled stairway and the mosaic pillars on the pedestrian bridge.

Whether it's pumpkins, barricades, ivy or tile, these projects get done because neighbors sign up for them, and this fall the sign-up lists are open.

If you live on Chenery, Sussex or anywhere along the route the crowds take up the hill, you already know how much a block like that adds to day-to-day life. When you want to know what it adds to your home's value, KJ Kohlmyer can walk you through a Glen Park valuation built on the specific street, not a citywide average.