The place is Charlotte, North Carolina. The kid with impeccable taste is Bryan Bowden, who very kindly gave me the background on the photo:
I had never seen the movie Tron, but I had all of those promotional read-along books that kids could get at Burger King or McDonald’s (I forget which). So my knowledge of the movie was based off of the abridged, kid-afied version of Tron. I just loved the idea of being a computer person who threw a frisbee weapon and rode cool laser motorcycles.
[…] ROTJ costumes cost money, and my mom never spent money on costumes because she was smart. Tron was my second choice. I found the mask first. It was at a dollar store and was just a simple shiny blue “robot” mask. I told my mom I wanted to be Tron. She had no idea what that was but used the pictures from the books to sew together a costume. The costume is a sleeveless vest she made and some Dallas Cowboys pants with reflective tape down the side. For good measure, she wrote “Tron” on the chest with the reflective tape, and put more reflective tape on the back in an angular pattern. She wanted me to be super reflective because 5-year-olds used to go trick or treating at night.
I was obsessed with sci-fi, robots, space, NASA, computers, etc. My family encouraged it, but they did not understand technology so we didn’t have a computer till the late ’80s and it was a used Apple IIe.
All of this tech love didn’t manifest itself in my future career. Currently, I’m a teacher and a comedian. I teach comedy at The Second City Training Center to ages 11 – adult. High School did an amazing job in killing my love of science. However, my demand for tech stuff in our luddite household encouraged my brother to explore and interact with newer technology. He’s now an engineer for HP (Hewlett Packard, not Lovecraft).
Ben Cooper did release a Tron costume in 1981, but I’ve never seen it outside of the box. It doesn’t matter. This one is better.
Thanks again, Bryan.
2 Warps to Neptune 
I never did Tron for Halloween, but I can remember having some serious Tron-inspired Frisbee battles out in the back yard. And trying to figure a good way of stowing the things on my back somehow when not in use…
We had a game called Tron Greek Dodge. There were two volleyball courts side by side on the playground, and you would have to jump over the gap in between them or get derezzed. We used 2 to 4 balls (depending on availability), and if you caught a ball you could use it like a disc, deflecting the other balls coming at you.
4 balls all at once, coming at you from both sides. Every hit below the head counted. Kid would jump the gap over one ball and another ball would hit him on the leg from the other side. He crashes to the pavement. One kid caught one full blast in the ear and he couldn’t hear for a week. I got hit in the balls once and the pain was so intense I couldn’t remember my name. There were bloody noses, a broken finger.
It was the best game I’ve ever played in my life.