People dressed Halloween costumes as their corresponding charact

Halloween Adventure, also known as New York Costumes, is open year-round, but it does approximately 60 percent to 70 percent of its business in October, and 15 percent in the last week before Halloween alone, Mr. Nelson said. It always stays open until midnight on the final three days before the holiday to accommodate last-minute shoppers, but sometimes even that is not enough.

“Halloween day is so crazy,” Mr. Nelson said. The store keeps only 20 people or so on staff during the rest of the year, but hires up to 100 employees ― many themselves decked out in mouse ears and gossamer wings ― for the Halloween season.

People dressed as anime cosplay characters strutted their stuff at an event held at the central library in San Bernardino, while children in colorful costumes roamed the downtown streets of Redlands and Rialto on Halloween.
At the event at the Norman F. Feldheym Central Library held by the Anime Relief Offices, a free club sponsored by the library, members and others showed up dressed as characters ranging from Pain and Tobi to Sasuke Uchiha.

"Halloween is a time when you don't have to be nice, smart or sophisticated, you just get to be somebody else," said Kellie Hanson, 16, of San Bernardino who dressed as the character Tobi, whom she described as totally goofy one minute and serious the next, for the event.