nytimes.

Here is an article from NYTimes about Vashon from March 2012.

Thriftway Bags

There is an underground currency on Vashon Island: Thriftway Bags.

Buying kindling at the Senior center all piled into a brown Thriftway bag.
A used Christmas gift for a sweet toddler is stashed into a Thriftway bag.
We toss our recyclables into the mouth of the transfer station and below are hundreds of Thrifway bags.
For Christmas we will invert our Thriftway bags and decorate them with red and green and then we will wrap our little surprises up in Thriftway bags.

There is a thriving industry in thriftway bags.
They are the lifeline that rescues our arms from our new purchases,
and save our guilt from plastic bags drifting in the wind.

Vashon does Halloween

Of course the Vashon Island community would not just let Halloween be a family or even neighborhood holiday. It is much too creative and playful for us to leave that one!

So Vashon town center closed down from traffic and most of the businesses open their doors and welcome trick or treaters.  From the senior center to the thriftway grocery store most everyplace was open!

It was really fun! People of ALL ages (seriously ALL) were dressed up.  I personally loved a Hula Zombie Dad and one of the businesses has people "haunting it." In general, it was really easy to handle our three year old despite the crowd of High Schoolers, Older kids, adults etc. 

All in all, we will go back next year- without a doubt. Hey, we even saw someone we knew so that was nice/cool.

Oh, I forgot, the Vashon Island Roasterie had hundreds of carved and lit pumpkins outside it was super super cool! We ALL loved it!

We didn't participate in this, but our neighborhood also had trick-or-treating.  We were pretty much done coaching our three year old through, "say trick-or treat," "Say thank you." etc. But it's cool that the houses around our neck of the woods  have a tradition too.