Justice

CityLab Daily: When Trick-or-Treat Is Against the Law

Also: I survived Brooklyn’s “L Train Shutdown Nightmare,” and the talent dividend in urban and rural areas.
Gary Cameron/Reuters

Keep up with the most pressing, interesting, and important city stories of the day. Sign up for the CityLab Daily newsletter here.

Spirit of the law: Old local laws can appear to grow cobwebs; they go unenforced over the years and are eventually forgotten. Case in point: weird Halloween ordinances. In some towns, decades-old laws declare it illegal to trick-or-treat above a certain age (sorry, teens) or after certain hours. The rules can be strangely specific, too—who really wants to ban masks on Halloween?