Chapel Hill mayor Jess Anderson joined 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Thursday, October 30 to discuss what Halloween on Franklin Street looks like in 2025. As part of the ongoing “Conversations With The Mayors” series, this edition focuses on Chapel Hill’s annual October celebrations, and how the times have changed in regard to revelers on Franklin Street.

Read a portion of the conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, below, and click here to listen to the full interview.

Andrew Stuckey: We are joined in studio now by Chapel Hill, mayor Jess Anderson. Jess, happy Halloween Eve.

Jess Anderson: Happy Halloween Eve to you, Andrew.

AS: Are you excited for that? Well, I guess, let me ask the real relevant question first. Do your kids have their costumes settled upon?

JA: I mean, they do. I did realize today that our iron has been broken for probably a long time, which is a statement about my kind of maintenance of clothing or lack thereof. But I have to iron on one more patch onto my seventh grader’s costume, and then we’re gonna be ready. So an iron is on its way to me, but yes, the costumes have been decided. My costume and my husband’s costumes have been decided.

AS: The village has rallied an iron to get you.

JA: Yes. Right. Exactly.

AS: You’re good to go on the kids front.

JA: Exactly. The townsfolk have stepped in to make sure that despite my lack of ironing, that it shall be done.

AS: I wanted to talk a little about Halloween here because, as somebody relatively new to town, there’s a reputation for Halloween in this town that has not at all been the case of what actually happened since I’ve lived here. And it sounds like maybe we’ve arrived at a place where everybody’s like, “The town’s not expecting to need to close down Franklin Street.” Not expecting it to be a huge turnout of people coming in for Halloween.

JA: I think that’s right. Well, we knew you were moving this way, so we shut down the fun.

AS: Appreciate that. I don’t wanna see a bunch of fun out there.

JA: No fun for you! We do expect downtown to be busy, but at this point, I would say our “Homegrown Halloween” efforts have made it so that it’s much less pandemonium on Franklin Street than the epic old times when people were coming from all over the state to flood Franklin Street.

AS: So that’s not happening. But we do have an expectation that downtown will be busy. Is there anything that folks ought to know before they go downtown?

JA: First of all, it’s gonna be very cold. It’s gonna be 38 degrees, supposedly. But we have plenty of parking in the Rosemary Street deck. There should still be lots of fun going on downtown. There should be lots of people. But we don’t anticipate closing Franklin Street or having the mobs take over. So it’ll probably be still a really good time. But I would definitely plan for cold and traffic.

 

Featured image via Town of Chapel Hill

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