the Village Vanguard. The annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, initiated in 1974 by Greenwich Village puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee, is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, 2 million in-person spectators, and a worldwide television audience of over 100 million. Street grid The neighborhood is distinguished by streets that are "off the grid", being set at an angle to the other streets in Manhattan. These roads were laid out in an 18th-century grid plan, approximately parallel or perpendicular to the Hudson, long before the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which created the main street grid plan for later parts of the city. Even streets that were given numbers in the 19th century to make them nominally part of the grid can be idiosyncratic, at best. West 4th Street, formerly Asylum Street, crosses West 10th, 11th and 12th Streets, ending at an intersection with West 13th Street. Heading north on Greenwich Street, West 12th Street is separated by three blocks from Little West 12th Street, which in turn is one block south of West 13th Street. Further, some of the smaller east–west residential streets are paved with setts (often confused with cobblestones), particularly in Far West Village and the Meatpacking District. This grid is prevalent through the rest of Greenwich Village as well. Demographics Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of the West Village neighborhood tabulation area was 66,880, a change of -1,603 (-2.4%) from the 68,483 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 80.9% (54,100) White, 2% (1,353) African American, 0.1% (50) Native American, 8.2% (5,453) Asian, 0% (20) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (236) from other races, and 2.4% (1,614) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.1% (4,054) of the population. The approximate residential population in the West Village is 34,000 people based on seven 2010 Census Tracts for Manhattan Community District 2. Some population characteristics include: 10% of the population in the West Village is less than 20 years old (27% of population of entire US is less than 20 years old) 45% of the population in the West Village is 20–39 years old (versus 27% in entire US) Females aged 20–39 make up 25% of the population in the West Village