This year, children and adults from all over Silicon Valley gathered in the richest area of ​​Palo Alto, the residents of which in recent years have organized a mini-competition among themselves, offering more and more varied decorations, entertainment and refreshments for guests. When you live next to a crowd of IT billionaires, this has its advantages.
There are, of course, disadvantages. The cost of real estate goes uphill. Restaurant prices have doubled. There is no point in competing in terms of parties or showing off your new car. And a resident of Palo Alto, Bill Glazier, complains that children on Halloween are less likely to beg for sweets at his home. Everyone goes to the next house, Steve Jobs’s house. He was famous for his Halloweens all over San Francisco, each year arranging interesting holidays for children. “Jobs handed out this terrible organic chocolate, nobody loved him. And they don’t give out iPhones. But people go there to see the show. ”
On Thursday night, the show was hosted by Lauren Powell Jobs, Steve's widow. She inherited Jobs’s fortune, mainly consisting of Apple shares, and now with $ 21.6 billion is the richest woman in the IT industry. With her three children, Lauren Jobs continues to stage various shows every year. In their open courtyard stands a lighthouse, stands a counter with dinners, professional actors perform. At the end of the show, they hand out bags with unusual sweets. Zombie teacher, zombie cheerleader, zombie friends and other zombies dance together to pop hits, to the delight of youth.
To put on such a night show, Jobs had to get permission from the city of Palo Alto - to exceed the permissible noise level. Also, they blocked the road for six quarters. In recent years, about three thousand children have gathered for each such performance, according to Palo Alto police.
The tradition began with the CEO of Apple, a big fan of Halloween. At the first Apple party in 1979, Steve Jobs, as you know, dressed up in the costume of Jesus Christ. “He thought it was semi-ironic and very funny, but lots of people then rolled their eyes,” wrote Walter Isaacson in Jobs’s biography. In addition to natural chocolate, at the festival, Jobs also usually give out boxes of carrot juice, the favorite drink of Steve Jobs, an avid vegetarian.
Like the entire IT industry in recent times, the Halloween holiday here has quickly turned from something homely, warm and unifying - into a large and rich performance, where billionaires, such a feeling, are trying to surpass each other. Some houses of Palo Alto literally line up hundreds of meters these days. Children wait for hours to be able to attend a celebration or receive a bucket of unusual chocolates from the local rich.
Sometimes the atmosphere and view resembles a kind of suburban Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, only for IT geeks. There are no naked people, punks or burning figures, but there are Halloween costumes in which it is not clear who is where and various "scary" structures near each house. This is a great opportunity for engineers, IT architects, investors and CEOs, who rarely communicate with someone outside their social circle, to relax a little. Like Burning Man, the structures that stand next to each house are ephemeral. Often they are built literally in the morning of Halloween, and disappear without a trace after 24 hours.
Jobs have competitors. One of the most notable in recent years has become Marissa Mayer. Former Yahoo CEO and Google employee # 20, she hosts a show near her home in Professorville (another area of ​​Palo Alto). Children come here in dresses waiting for sweets, and leave stunned. There is everything to choose from: bags with Sour Patch Kids, Haribo Goldbears, M & M's, Nestle Crunch bars, Goobers and Hot Tamales boxes, Mild Duds, Nerds.
The whole courtyard at Marissa Mayer is furnished with plush animals - large zebras, swans, elephants, sloths, pink giraffes, and narwhals. Children can take one stuffed toy with them. Meyer says: “This mood roams around Palo Alto in Halloween - I just adore it! Children, sweets, dresses, all this is fun and really brings us together and our neighbors. ”
One of Mayer's neighbors, Kim Blending, a Facebook product marketing manager, brought her three boys to Mayer's house so they could get their sweets. She herself dressed up in black and put on a bright red lipstick. Halloween she plays Elizabeth Holmes , the disgraced leader of Theranos, who tricked her investors into billions. Kim chose this suit because it is “the embodiment of Silicon Valley and its venture capital. She was able to take place in this world, but she was a cheater. "
One kilometer from Mayer, in Old Palo Alto, another party erupts. She is happy with Jasmine Lukac, stepdaughter of billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Her performance is more like a carnival: clowns, acrobats, jugglers. They succeed each other on an impromptu scene near the labyrinth for children. And in the air (in fact, on a high curved pole) a witch flies.
Entertainment, entertainment, and promotion should not be forgotten. Flags with the logos of ICON, a group led by Lukac, trying to combine the capabilities of Silicon Valley and Israel, develop right there at the top. Many children are brought by their parents, who are also not the last people in the valley, and you can meet many at your party.
In recent years, Google’s co-founder Larry Page has also hosted an epic show. His party is just 150 meters from Lauren Jobs' house. This year, the topics were UFOs and carnival. One of the inhabitants of the town said that he liked the most Gotham, which was a few years ago. “It looked like something from Hollywood, for millions of dollars.”
Palo Alto’s director of public relations, Megan Horrigan, said that “the neighbors are reimbursing the city for the costs of holding and securing such events.” But an old resident of the area, Lynn Brown, who lives near Jobs, says she never paid for anything. “Good neighbors” are calculated for everything, and she thinks it is Lauren Jobs and Larry Page.
Longtime residents of the area miss the old, calmer days, but the events have already gone very far, judging by the crowds that came on Thursday. Especially in the morning and in the afternoon, these were mainly East Asian families who came from Mountain View, San Jose, Fremont or Milpitas to watch the show and let their children frolic and ask for sweets safely in closed streets. One could hear Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Turkish. Information on how to come and what to do in Palo Alto for Halloween is distributed through word of mouth, social networks and instant messengers, such as Line and WhatsApp. Everyone says, "just go to Steve Jobs’s house, see you there."
