Hard-Core Halloween

By Kathleen Kingsbury

Riot gear, police barricades: Happy Halloween from Madison, Wis.! For the past four years, the college town's annual party--one of the country's biggest--has turned violent, causing police to deploy pepper spray and arrest hundreds. With 100,000 revelers expected to flood Madison's streets for this year's bash, the city is preparing a new party-control measure. Its main drag, State Street, will be open only to those who pay a $5 entry fee. "We're recovering some of the $600,000 in taxpayers' money spent on crowd control," says Mayor Dave Cieslewicz. "Some" may end up being "a little"--only 3,000 tickets have been sold. Partiers simply plan to move to venues nearby (as in a block away), so few residents expect the fete to end happily. "People in masks feel uninhibited by morals," says alderman Austin King, "let alone laws."