Photos: All The Best Costumes At The 2021 Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade

On Saturday a record number of costumed doggies (and people) flooded the East River Park Amphitheater for the 31st annual Tompkins Square Halloween Parade. The event had been canceled last year due to the pandemic, but oh man were people ready to get back out there and gawk at cute dogs in ridiculous costumes again.

In fact, the procession across the stage was scheduled to last from noon to 3 p.m., but at around 2 p.m. there were already nearly 350 registered "contestants," the line still stretched up to the pedestrian bridge over the FDR, and the organizers stopped accepting doggos in store-bought costumes.

Not that anyone was complaining about the size of the spectacle. As Angela Harden, who came all the way up from North Carolina for the event, put it, "This is the best thing I've ever seen in my whole entire life!"

In addition to usual costumes involving food (tacos, hot dogs), superheroes, animals-that-aren't-dogs, delivery workers, celebrities, and group themes like Scooby Doo and Wizard of Oz, there were at least two Essential Worker get-ups, a few Lokis, lots of Squid Games stuff, several space tourists (a la Jeff Bezos and William Shatner), and two AOCs on the Met Gala red carpet.

Everyone's a winner at Dog Halloween, but there are also a few actual winners of actual prizes announced from the stage. Best In Show went to Ruben Santana of the Bronx, who lost his longtime parade companion doggie this past year but won top honors with his new pet Amoon, who anchored their Essential Workers "float."

The Best Food costume went to Mimi, who came as a Dim Sum Cart; the Best New York outfit went to a pair of puppies dressed as Staten Island Ferries; the Schitt's Creek crew won in the Pop Culture category, Bark Obama (in Kehinde Wiley portrait mode) won the Current Events award; a great dane in a Maleficent get-up was deemed to be the Scariest; and a complicated butterfly diorama called Chi Morphosis took home the new-this-year Best Chihuahua trophy.

Robbed: the Pinhead chihuahua, the Furetto Fast and Furious send up; the French Toast wheaten terrier, the Devo dog, and Trash Panda, decked out in an overflowing garbage can and raccoon tail.