NEIGHBORS : But No Balloons : Halloween starts early at this chain store, but it is their only business.

Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Halloween.

A little early you say? Tell that to the folks at the Halloween Adventure costume store at The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks. The store opened last week and will stay open through October.

Lenny Goldman, western states coordinator for this national chain store, admits sales aren’t brisk early on, but having the store open serves as a good advertisement. “Halloween, that’s our business,” he said. “We don’t do Christmas, we don’t do balloons. We do Halloween.”

Just so you know, Goldman said the big-selling children’s costumes this year should be influenced, as usual, by the motion picture industry. “The Terminator, the Rocketeer will be popular and kids are going to like the costume from Robin Hood too. That’s for boys,” he said. “As far as girls, nothing has come out in the last few years or so except the Little Mermaid.”

Goldman also expects masks of George Bush, Saddam Hussein and Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sell well for obvious reasons.

This is the store’s third year at The Oaks. Over the last two years Goldman has noticed that shoppers in Ventura County tend to be more conservative than people in other areas. “If I put out my body condoms, my safe sex costumes, I occasionally get complaints,” he said. “Or if we put out some body parts, like the rear ends or the boobs . . . even though the idea is not sex. If a guy wants to get dressed up as a hula girl, he’s got to get boobs or a rear end.”

Golfer Mitch Voges’ recent victory in the U.S. Amateur Championship has served as nice publicity for the Spanish Hills Golf and Country Club, now being developed in Ventura County. Only problem is, most of the publicity has placed the club in Simi Valley, when it’s actually in Camarillo.

Voges, the club’s director of golf, lives in Simi Valley, he works in Camarillo and . . . well, you can see the confusion. Regardless, Charles Stricklin, spokesman for the development, said he’s received a lot of inquiries about the Camarillo club, set to open in mid-1992.

Congratulations to Ventura swing dance instructors Rob van Haaren and Melinda Comeau. They came away with a victory at the Southern California Swing Dance Championships in late August. The pair won the jitterbug-Lindy Hop competition with a routine they finished choreographing only hours earlier.

Van Haaren-Comeau also finished second in the balboa dance competition. What’s the balboa? “It’s a smooth version of the shag.” van Haaren said. OK, but what’s a shag?

Customers of Moby Dick Seafood in Ventura might like to know that owner George White plans to reopen the place in about a week. The fish market is closed as White adds takeout facilities.

White said he will do most of the cooking while continuing to work behind the counter.

He sounded like a true fish purveyor, when he described the appearance of his market during the renovation: “It’s been gutted.”