New York Today: Send in the Ghouls

Mario Tama/Getty Images Everyone is larger than life at the Village Halloween Parade.

Updated 6:35 a.m. | Jeanne Fleming is planning a very, very big party.

“When I get there, I know about 20,000 of the people,” she said. “But then there’s this other 40,000 that just show up. I never know what they’re going to do till they get there.”

It’s the Village Halloween Parade, returning after being wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.

The logistics of a celebration of mass chaos are daunting: the parade is put together on the spot.

Ms. Fleming’s field marshal surveys the crowd at the starting line.

“He throws in a thousand people, then he throws in a float,” she said. “Then another 2,000 people, then a band.

“It’s about what needs to be there at each moment.”

This year’s theme is revival â€" of the city and of the parade, which needed a fund-raising campaign for the show to go on.

Giant puppets from the parade’s 40-year history will be trotted out: The penguins. The eyeballs. The luna moth.

One float features superheroes in plain clothes: people who helped neighbors survive and rebuild after the storm.

The parade is Halloween night. We also have a guide to this weekend’s Halloween events below.

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

WEATHER

Sun with teeth: bright and cold, with a high of 55. That’s like mid-November. Low near 40 tonight.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on southbound 1 train. Click for latest status.

Rails: Outbound delays on Metro-North’s Harlem and New Haven lines. Click for L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Joseph J. Lhota speaks on WFMU radio (91.1 FM) at 7:45 a.m., holds a news conference on policing on a corner in Bedford-Stuyvesant and attends the One Hundred Black Men mayoral forum in Harlem.

- Bill de Blasio is on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC at 11:20 a.m.

- Downtown business owners, children and pets march to a spot beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and pour buckets of water into the East River in memory of Hurricane Sandy. 10:30 a.m.

- Take part in an attempt to set a world record for “most participants in an apple-crunching event.” It’s as simple as biting into an apple at a city greenmarket. Noon.

- The city Sanitation Department’s anthropologist-in-residence, Robin Nagle, tells tales of the garbage men at the Mid-Manhattan Library. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- The New York Arab-American Comedy Festival at the Broadway Comedy Club. 8 p.m. [$15]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

HALLOWEEN HAPPENINGS

Today

- Watch creepy cartoons from the 1920s through the ’40s in the cafe of the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- Get your Grumpy Cat on at the HallowMeme costume party at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn. 8:30 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P.]

Friday

- Venture, if you dare, into the haunted house at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. [Free]

- A Procession of the Ghouls at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, followed by a showing of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. [$20]

- Check out the “Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul” show at the Morgan Library, which is free on Fridays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

- Sleep over at the American Museum of Natural History. [Expensive]

Saturday

- … is dog day. There’s the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade at noon.

- And the Great PUPkin costume contest in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, also at noon.

- A pumpkin festival at the Central Park Bandshell. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. [Free]

- Wander through the haunted train tunnel on the High Line. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. [Free]

- Investigate the paranormal at Lawrence Cemetery in Bayside, Queens. 3 p.m. [$10, reservations required]

Sunday

- Halloween Kidz Karnival at Hudson River Park. noon to 6 p.m. [Free]

- A flotilla of jack-o’-lanterns sets sail on Harlem Meer in Central Park at twilight, preceded by a parade. Starts at 4 p.m. [Free]

AND FINALLY…

A menace has come to 36 of New York’s 62 counties.

It destroys crops, eats bird eggs and kills fawns.

And its population can triple in a year.

We refer to Eurasian Boars (a k a “razorbacks,” “Russian boars,” “wild boars,” “feral swine”), which have escaped many upstate hunting preserves and are notoriously hard to control.

Now, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a boar ban bill.

By the end of 2015, you will not be able to import, breed or hunt the beasts in New York.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, e-mail us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Find us on weekdays at nytoday.com.