Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Halloween Stores

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by bestselling author Jason Pargin (‘John Dies At The End’ series, ‘Zoey Ashe’ series) for a look at why Halloween stores are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Halloween stores. Known for being seasonal. Famous for orange. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Halloween stores are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Jason Pargin is my guest today. My former colleague, my old pal, one of my favorite authors, he's writing a couple new novels all at once, and I highly recommend his latest. It is entitled Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick. It's full of humor, it's full of big ideas, and it makes some amazing predictions. For example, it predicts a city called Tabula Rasa.

And Tabula Rasa is a city that was built by American business executives from scratch in the middle of the American desert so they could have a U.S. city with no regulations yet, and also so they could set up life exactly how they wanted to set it up. Very interesting fictional concept in two of Jason's books, actually, both the Zoe series of books. And then I'm also going to link you to another story. This story is from CNN. This CNN story is about a former Walmart executive who wants to build a city from scratch in the American desert, and it would be called Telosa.

This executive is named Mark Lohr, but the idea is to reimagine how life works by building a whole new city from scratch in the U.S. desert where there's, you know, no regulations yet. That's in CNN from less than a month ago. So I think Jason's novels are very prescient, and I think his predictive powers are very interesting to dig into. We're going to springboard into this episode by discussing another prediction from those same novels by Jason, because it relates to Halloween. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and have used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape

peoples. I acknowledge Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee, and Saatse Yaha peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Halloween stores. That's one of the three patron chosen topics for this month. Thank you so much to Michael Bucciarone for a great suggestion there.

Also to Anna Moritz for cheerleading it in the polls. And I'm thrilled for you to hear it. So, please sit back, or keep standing on an extension ladder as you drape an orange banner over the front of a former Carson's. Remember Carson's? Shop in there? Anyway, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jason Parchin. I'll be back

after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Jason, so glad you're here. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. With this topic, it's Halloween stores, and I really lined you up specifically for it for a whole bunch of reasons. But let's get into it. Yeah, not just because I am a semi-famous horror author. horror author. I have this personal pet theory of mine that Halloween is slowly taking over as like the big American holiday for reasons that I think are actually really important as far as like how the culture is changing. I think it kind of represents a lot of shifts in the way that we live our lives. We'll get into all of that. But I also, before anyone says anything, I fully realize I have been promoting the same book for literally the entire time this podcast has existed. Please understand, I only write a book once every two years.

That means that once I write one, I have to promote it for two straight years after it comes out. I'm not any happier about this than you are. But one reason I'm on here is the book that I've always am on here promoting is the science fiction novel, Zoe Punches the Future and the Dick. And the backdrop of that book is it takes place in the future by a few decades in an America where Halloween has kind of grown to the point where it's kind of overtaken Christmas. And they've actually split the holiday up in that universe to where there's one day for the kids stuff, the trick or treating, and then a separate day that's for the grownups and the Halloween parties and the drinking and all of that. And they've turned it into a whole gift-giving holiday and all that. That is based on this personal theory I have that the growth of Halloween kind of represents the changes in America that we're seeing right now. Yeah, and of course, I've known you for a while and you've always said, like, I am part of the war on Christmas.

I'd like to destroy Christmas. And so, you know, this is part of the master plan there, too. Really, really excited for you. That's going so good. Yeah. Halloween is the resistance faction we have to back in order to overthrow Christmas. We have to fund the Halloween rebels in order to win this war. Just like an ornament shaped Death Star. Like we got to fly our fighters in there. win this war. Just like an ornament-shaped Death Star.

Like, we gotta fly our fighters in there. That's how. But yeah, and both the Zoe books, I love how Halloween is this, you know, it's not exactly the 12 days of Christmas because it's different timing, but Halloween is this season in the books. And that feels very real.

That feels like a thing that's on the way. I have already purchased a Halloween item and I think I bought it a month and a half ago this year, like a new little banner to celebrate it because it looked good and it's coming up. Yeah. Just officially my local target stores, they put out their Halloween stuff, their costumes on September 9th. So now we're almost two full months in advance. Now, that's not the 120 days of Christmas that we get in terms of when the shopping malls will flip over their Christmas carols literally on November 1st, but already have trees available for purchase right now. It doesn't beat that. Halloween stuff and the pumpkin-shaped Reese's and all that coming out when it's still 96 degrees outside in some parts of the country

in early the first week of September. That's fairly new. The idea that spending on Halloween has grown to the point that retailers are like, okay, summer's kind of over. It's now. Let's go balls to the wall with Halloween. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like both of us do at least some of our Halloween shopping outside of Halloween stores specifically. It's at a huge store that does everything. I've only been in a Spirit Halloween once. Have you ever spent much time in these new pop-up ones? Oh, yeah. Yeah. In ours, we had a closed department store that they did the conversion,

I think, last week, probably around September 13th or whatever. So that's the Spirit Halloween. And again, for those of you not fortunate enough to have Spirit Halloweens, basically the saddest closed department store, whatever it was, like some old farm supply store or a JCPenney or Sears or something went out, they will just tack up what almost is a homemade plastic Spirit Halloween banner over the sign, like hanging by a couple of bungee cords they've put up there. And then they just fill the store with Halloween stuff. And you step inside this old decrepit department store and suddenly it's this huge Halloween party packed with masks. And it's playing some party music and all that.

But yeah, they just appear and it's almost like a turning of the seasons. The leaves start turning and the spirit of Halloween starts popping up in whatever abandoned building you have nearby. That is, the sign is always like mostly fastened because it is a banner. I always feel like they're definitely up and they're definitely not falling down, but they kind of look like they're falling down. It's a really precarious carnival kind of feeling. down, it's a really precarious carnival kind of feeling. Yeah. And I feel like that's got to be part of the appeal because if they spent even a couple more hours on the sign, on the signage, they can make it look more like a permanent thing. But I think that's, I think that's part of the, the joy of it. It is like, no, this is, it's kind of the same way that I think in the fireworks

industry, they, they kind of want it to be like a roadside stand. It's like you feel like it's illicit. And here, I think feeling like this old department store is now in costume is part of the aesthetic, I think. And of course, in this episode, we will get into some international things. And also Halloween is pretty US-centric and somewhat Canada-centric, I think. And this particular kind of story that we'll spend a chunk of the show talking about Spirit Halloween, it is mainly a U.S. and Canada thing. So if you if you are if you're an international listener, you've probably seen it the other way I have, which is Twitter comedy writing. Like I see a really frequent joke set up punch line where the setup is some kind of thing is having a hard time. And then the punchline is just got replaced by a spirit Halloween.

Ha ha ha. Which is kind of a dark joke about retail collapsing. But but I've seen it like reference that way. And if you're in another country, that's what's going on. That's what's happening. Yeah. And we'll we'll export this to you soon enough. Yeah, right. Right. happening yeah and we'll we'll export this to you soon enough yeah right right and also say hi to

your largest most abandoned store in your town now because soon it will have a banner on it with a ghoul and a bunch of orange writing yeah but yeah as on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called Stand Through the Heart and You're Too Late, Baby, You Give Numbers a Bad Name. Bow, bow. He's pausing for applause after he does that. And he's pausing for applause after he does that. And folks, that name was submitted by Zach Schwartz.

Thank you so much, Zach. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SipPod on Twitter or to SipPod at gmail.com. And the first number here is, I think, really, really indicative of what you have predicted, Jason, or at least what you feel could happen. Number is 9.1 billion US dollars, billion with a B. 9.1 billion is how much Americans spent on Halloween in 2017. As kind of an approximate number, USA Today got it from a survey by the National Retail Federation. There's not like scientific studies of this as far as I know, but they projected a similar spend in 2018. And then

I can't find 2019 numbers. And then we had the pandemic. So that's about the benchmark we've got is a little over $9 billion going into this holiday that is not anybody's particular religion and just something that people really, really like to celebrate. Yeah. And most importantly, that it's growing faster than any other holiday. Obviously, that number is nothing close to what we spend on Christmas, but it is growing faster than Christmas or Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving or Easter, any of the rest. Yeah. And I also feel like that sounds correct to people if they just think about it, especially in the U.S., you know, like I would be shocked if any other holiday was

exploding without me noticing. Yeah. And we'll get into the reasons why is that it's becoming more of an adult holiday where if you think, well, gosh, people are really spending that much in candy. It's like, well, yeah, but it's also become an adult costume holiday, a party holiday, a drinking holiday. Like it's there's more going into it than there used to be. Yeah. And as far as how many people are spending that money, the survey said more than 175 million Americans were expected to participate, which is more than half the population. And they also, for some reason, broke it out by U.S. regions. So the lowest spend per person was in the Midwest at $78.91. Then the highest spend was $90.35 in the American South. So they say that the South

is the most into it of all the regions. Which I guess is surprising, but also I don't know how much of it just comes down to the difficulty in capturing what people are actually spending. Because who's to say if I buy a huge bag of Snickers from Walgreens, is that for Halloween or is that just for me? for me. Well, and another spend here, this is 310 million British pounds. So 310 million British pounds is how much British people spent on Halloween in 2016. And National Geographic says that came from 46% of all British consumers. And also they they argue that that's a very recent phenomenon. I don't know if Americans and Canadians know that our style of Halloween is only starting to become popular in the rest of the world. That's a new phenomenon. It's kind of internet and mass media driven for the most part.

Right. And this is where we're going to start to get into it a little bit because this is not about like a religion or a worldview spreading across borders, but more. This is a thing we do just for fun and that it's yeah, you see it turn up because, as you said, American mass media is everywhere. And the American portrayal of Halloween parties and of movies about the holiday can be seen everywhere. And the American portrayal of Halloween parties and of movies about the holiday can be seen everywhere. The idea that actual holidays spread this way is fairly recent. Yeah, and it's a few different pipelines. National Geographic says that Halloween's growing in Germany because there were such significant U.S. military bases in West Germany in the 20th century, that was kind of a seed for it. They say that in Japan, the holidays kind of dovetailed with the Japanese subculture of costume play. In Mexico, it's sort of been fused with the Dia de los Muertos

holiday on October 31st into November 1st. And then, yeah, every sitcom does a Halloween episode because that fills a slot. We, you know, all of our horror movies, all of our internet and other broadcasting of culture around this just kind of party, it mainly just seems to look fun to the rest of the world. And it doesn't seem to conflict too badly with what they do, if anything, they can incorporate it. Yeah. And before anyone comments, like you guys honestly don't know that Halloween, that there are religious origins to it. Please think about who you're talking to. Yes, we know. Of course we know that. That if you go and you ask a thousand children in America who are out trick-or-treating, what's the religious significance of Halloween,

you're going to get like, is it Dracula's birthday? Those origins are long forgotten. What it represents now, you know, because like Christmas still has the word Christ in it, but what Halloween represents now has nothing to do with whatever, you know, various festivals or harvest festivals it used to be tied to and like you mentioned japan and the whole culture of cosplay and the fact that you know now due to the internet and due to like the you know pre pre-covid like this spread of like all these various conventions and for nerds and people to dress up like that has become a year-round thing

the art of making elaborate costumes the the, you know, that's, that's a big thing on social media and that it's not necessarily restricted to Halloween, but the whole culture of costuming and just the joy of costuming and dressing up and increasingly elaborate things and people becoming competitive with each other as that has grown. I feel like halloween has also grown because of course it's the same skills it's the same basic like ritual of

really dressing up and showing off that i think people can enjoy wherever they're from and and this is again part of the central thesis here is that it has spread because, look, part of what's great about modern American society is that we say it doesn't matter what your beliefs are or what your background, you can still spend money on this thing. And it has an excuse for you to spend lots of money on a particular day because we've said this is what you spend money on. Our system says we're welcome to anyone willing to buy things on this day. Yeah, wow. And I'm just thinking about how nobody checks if you get Christmas stuff. Nobody's like, well, but have you served the Lord the whole year or not?

Nobody cares. It's just pure purchasing, which makes sense to me. But I never think about that. Yeah. And it's fun. No one is suffering for Halloween. Because I feel like even the vandalism aspect of it, which used to be huge in my youth, even that seems like it's kind of gone away.

Until they start vandalizing the Christmas stuff. It's part of your war. I know about it. We're going to put it up last. And the next number here is more than 50,000 people, five zero 50,000. That's the expected participation in this year's Greenwich Village Halloween parade in New York City. Time Out New York says it was canceled last year for COVID, but the volunteers who run it got the permit for 2021. They're trying to raise $150,000 in donations to put it on. And it's a community-organized, very, very large parade of kind of notably mostly adults. This is not for like kids to very cutely walk around a neighborhood, which I have seen in especially New York and LA, they go in groups. But this Greenwich Village parade is basically just adults throwing a Halloween party in the

streets. Yeah. And this kind of gets into my whole thesis here about it becoming a much more adult holiday. And the reasons for that, there's been a lot written about it. I mean, some of it is just speculation. So you'll see articles referenced like the modern trend of delayed maturity, and that being why people feel okay about still participating. And that's delayed maturity is not an insult. It's just objectively right now in 2021, people are getting married later, having children later, getting their own homes later, moving out later. Like it's just, it's just true. It's the, what used to be the markers of adulthood has kind of gotten moved back. And it is, you know, more

culturally accepted now for people my age to play video games. I mean, I'm pushing 50 and I still play video games. That used to be considered ridiculous. So the idea that it's now culturally OK for a grown up to actually put effort into their costume, it's not just to take your kids out trick or treating, but actually do it as your own thing. Decorate your house, buy a 12 foot tall skeleton from Home Depot to put in your yard. That's fairly recent, but it is driving the growth of this, because it's not because we're in a baby boom and all those kids need Halloween costumes.

It's very much the opposite. We're growing older as a country, but Halloween is growing older as a holiday, meaning the demographics are skewing older. So that's how you can have a massive event like this that's mainly just for adults. Yeah, it was forever ago, but I sent you my neighbor in Pasadena who had that zombie decoration that was always in their yard. did Halloween decorations in a big way for Halloween, but then the rest of the year they left one figure of a zombie crawling up out of the lawn. And I think it was just bolted down in a way where they couldn't pull it out. But I always thought about this homeowner with this really beautiful little bungalow in Pasadena, and they just always have a zombie out front, is very modern to me. I don't think you were allowed to do that in the 1950s.

They'd probably tell Eisenhower, and then you're in trouble. Yeah, and you can go to any of the stores that have decorations, and you see these huge $300 animatronic specters of death that talk and all that. And it's like, well, that's not for kids. That's for somebody to buy, and they have to store that year round in their garage or just leave it out, leave it out all the time. If you want to be that person, there's nothing stopping you. And someone's going to point out, well, these are all just like former gods who grew up and didn't want to give up. They had all the Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas stuff as a teen, and they just didn't

want to get rid of it. And maybe that's true too. But I think part of that aesthetic that it's always Halloween, it's just part of a larger attitude where we feel like the whole world is Halloween all the time. So why not? It's like the rise of those really expensive adult haunted houses where it's like 60 bucks and you have to sign a thing saying that you're okay with graphic nudity and being physically abused. And it's like, on one hand, that's definitely recent. But on the other hand, it's like, well, why not? Why shouldn't the experience of being scared at a haunted house, why should you have to give that up? Like, why should that be a kid's only thing?

If there's joy in letting yourself be scared or put through something like that, then why would it be any different at age 40? And with the adult nature of it, too, we'll also link an article from vinepair.com in 2017. It's a wine site. And it's not super scientific, but they point out that Halloween has become a bigger and bigger drinking holiday. And they're mostly basing it on the volume of Google searches. They say that searches for wine and for liquor both jump annually in October, and that's going back to 2004. So for, you know, coming up on 20 years, that's been

happening. They also say that millennials are only about a fourth of US eligible drinkers, but they consume a third of US spirits. And so it's this generation that is delaying adulthood a bit is also maybe drinking a little more than others. And so when Halloween comes along as an occasion for it, they seem to be doing it. Yeah, specifically, they're drinking a little more than others. And so when Halloween comes along as an occasion for it, they seem to be doing it. Yeah, specifically, they're drinking a lot of wine, which anyone, if you've noticed, your local grocery store suddenly has two full aisles of wine now where they used to have none.

That's why. And this is also why, you know, every clothing store has a whole aisle of like wine mom t-shirts. But this is partly why I think that estimate of Halloween spending earlier is actually undershooting this somewhat because I know for a fact they have no idea how much of the alcohol purchased the last two weeks of October is for Halloween parties versus just I'm going to get drunk on my sofa alone, and it happens to be Halloween. It's impossible to estimate that, but I think Halloween as a drinking and debauchery holiday, it's kind of

hard to capture, like, or how much weed is being smoked that night or whatever, but I suspect it's a lot. And also, you've got some stuff here, Jason, about just other reasons that Halloween is blowing up as an adult event and especially as one that is very modern suited. Yeah. And this is based on personal observation. is it is probably the last mostly anxiety-free holiday because it's one that basically is not tied to family or travel. Like around Thanksgiving, you'll see actual articles and blog posts about how to talk to your racist uncle at Thanksgiving or how to talk to your family about Trump or how to keep to your family about Trump or how to

keep politics from ruining your holiday or around Christmas. Christmas, you know, is one of the most stressful times of the year. If you have been out shopping a week before Christmas, you'll see more road rage and more angry people in line at stores. It's so much money. It's so much financial stress. people in line at stores. It's so much money. It's so much financial stress. There's so much obligation built into it. And so many, again, it's the biggest travel holiday of the year because of the obligation to fly back home to the small town you fled in your youth to get away from it and having to go back there. Family you may not necessarily get along with. It seems like once you're no longer a child in America, very few people seem to actually look forward to Christmas, so much as it's just something you have

to acknowledge and you have to build your entire financial year around. Halloween, however, is just for fun. It's just a time to express your creativity. Do it with your friends. If you've got kids, do it with your kids. And you can kind of celebrate it your own way. It just seems like it's a holiday that fits us better now. We're a more secular, less religious nation than we've been in our entire history. Just trying to think of other holidays that could compete with this. I feel like the 4th of July is relatively low stress and relatively high party,

but then people get up in their heads about America's role in the world, maybe. And either whether it's weird to be patriotic or whether they need to be super patriotic to even out the unpatriotic people. Or like even that one can be a mental load, even though it's a bunch of explosions and rad food. Yeah, it's a cookout. And then, I mean, no one has invented any new fireworks for the last thousand years. Right. So it's kind of very much, it's kind of samey.

People that are dog owners know that their dogs hate the 4th of July, that it's like legitimately traumatizing because of all the illegal fireworks going off that just sound like gunshots so that they have to go spend the whole evening comforting their dog. It's the same thing with Thanksgiving. Like Thanksgiving, like the whole, well, we're giving thanks for the origins, the founding of America. No one does that on Thanksgiving. It's you eat turkey and maybe watch a couple of football games. I'm not trying to say like, well, it's problematic because of the liberals. I just mean that it doesn't, like looking forward for weeks to like, this is the day we're going to sit back and be

thankful for the founding of America and that the Native Americans so kindly gifted us their country. There's like not much room for growth there. I don't think a ton of future for that holiday, though. A lot of it is just referred to as Turkey Day. Yeah. But Halloween is different. Halloween is kind of built in like this it's kind of the same as how american blockbuster movies can be watched in basically

any country because it's you know it's it's it's fast and furious it's a bunch of people in cars trying to save the world like you don't have to know any particular tradition to find that fun. And I think Halloween is kind of the modern incarnation of it. I think it travels very well across cultures, across borders and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And even, we'll especially link that National Geographic article about British celebration of it. Like in a few countries, there are people who are a little wary of it. Like in a few countries, they there are people who are a little wary of it because it's so American and it travels so well. Like there's some Brits who wish it didn't quite step on Guy Fox Day so much, which is nearby in November. But also, that's not like a huge problem for them. They're just like, ah, this this holiday is like too catchy. It's a little too fun,

which I think is part of why it is growing so much. like too catchy. It's a little too fun, which I think is part of why it is growing so much. Yeah. And look, someone smarter than me can talk about like the sociological importance of religious holidays and rituals and days that actually are seen as sacred and what they mean and why cultures all have them and what they mean for culture. And that having a holiday where it's just about having fun for a couple of days, that maybe that doesn't have the same effect. I get it. I guess I would say the ritual of costuming and putting on a costume and making one

and spending months or weeks making one and then getting together and having some sort of a costume-based ritual, that is also something that is ancient and predates the written word. of a costume-based ritual, that is also something that is ancient and predates the written word. And in any ancient culture, any ancient ruins, one thing you will always find is ceremonial masks and making masks and wearing them. There is something that that does for humans that I don't know that science fully understands, but it actually has more importance to people than you might think. And I get it if you're just a little kid dressing up as Captain America because you saw a movie that maybe that doesn't hit home. But the idea of this being a thing that adults gather and do, I think that actually has just

as deep of roots as anything else. Yeah, I agree. And we've got a next number here all about costuming. The number is 1938. And 1938 is the year of the founding of Don Post Studios. And this leads into where modern Halloween stores are at. But Don Post Studios started 1938, making masks as movie props, and then also from there got into selling these high-end masks to people who wanted nice costume stuff. And they're significant for two reasons. For one thing, they're credited with being one of the companies that popularized costume rubber masks as a thing,

which are incredibly common now on Halloween and in Halloween stores. It was them and also a company called the Topstone Rubber Toys Company. But then the other thing about them is that in 1975, they got aorn and stuff from the original Star Trek. But Paramount forced them to also make a Kirk mask and a Spock mask. And they were unpopular. They were weird looking. And then one of the Kirk masks got spray painted white and turned into the Michael Myers mask in the original John Carpenter Halloween movie in 1978. Part of the reason that movie could do that and use that is that before Halloween stores, before huge like big box stores like Target selling them, a lot of Halloween stuff

was either in toy stores and novelty stores, or it was mail order. Like it was a little bit harder to get. It was a little more analog. And it made that stuff a little more unique. Like it was, if somebody put a spirit Halloween prop in a movie, I think it would stick out. But these weird Kirk masks were easy to transition into a low-budget horror movie that sparked the whole thing. Yeah, and also in general, in my youth, costumes were garbage. I get that they had to be very inexpensive, that parents are not going to want to spend a lot of money. And I know that some of us, if you had that year, that you had to go as like a whimsical hobo just by putting on like some dirty clothes and your costume wasn't your homeless. I get it.

But yeah, costumes are way better now. And the last number here, it takes us into the first takeaway of the show. The number is more than 1,300. More than 1,300 is the number of spirit Halloween franchises that popped up in the U.S. and Canada in 2020. And that brings us into takeaway number one. in 2020. And that brings us into takeaway number one. The seasonal Halloween store business might be the future of all retail. And we're going to talk about the biggest company doing it, Spirit Halloween, but their history and their trajectory and what they do now might be, you know, kind of a signal for where a lot of brick and mortar

shopping is going to go in general. Yeah, because something has to change with the way, I don't know if, if you've ever lived in a town that had a lot of closed stores, typically when a Walmart or something big goes out, that huge space just sits there and slowly crumbles. They are not in any way obligated to tear it down or turn the lot into something that's not an eyesore. So it's kind of a sign of huge chunks of America where businesses or money has fled as you've got these empty big box stores and it's just a big, very visually unappealing building that just sits there for years and years and slowly

fades and falls apart. Yeah, I used to live not too far from a former mall. And like, it still had a few things going, but it just felt strange, like, like how much of it was shut down. And also, both of us being from Illinois, I you know, I think Sears is on my mind. That's that's a chain that has just left some kind of shells all over the U.S. and something will happen to them. Maybe this. Yeah, because that's why it feels like you drive past those stores and it's always like, well, surely somebody could set up something in there.

Something. Like there's no way the best thing for the economy or for whoever owns that piece of land is just to have this empty, sad Sears store slowly falling to pieces. And so the idea that these guys started this business saying, look, we're not going to spend a penny building retail space. We're just going to wait for other retail space to, it's like those crabs that they just go and find a shell and crawl into one instead of growing one. It's like that. We're just going to wait for something else to close and then we will jump in. And again, 1,300 locations as of the most recent, that's a lot that these things are just dispersed and set up and kind of just, just pop into being all at once over the course of a couple of weeks.

Yeah, yeah. And in particular, I find that number amazing because it's from October of 2020. So there is a pandemic and there are not widespread vaccines in people's arms yet. And they still had one of their bigger years ever of setting up these stores. It's a really thriving, growing business that, like you said, just hermit crabs its way into whatever's around. Hermit crabs. That was the name of the creature I was trying to think of. I'm pretty sure that's it. I was gestating on it when you said it. I was like,

horseshoe? No, they don't take actual horseshoes. Okay, okay, okay. Like, I was trying to remember crab stuff. But we got a few sources here. In particular, there's an amazing piece by Ernie Smith at his website called tedium.co. Highly recommend. Now, there's also a piece by Michelle Debchak for Mental Floss, another Mental Floss piece by Jake Rawson, and a piece for Bloomberg by Patrick Clark and Polly Mazenz. But like we said, this is a U.S. and Canada chain, Spirit Halloween. I was astounded to learn the scale of it.

Not only was it more than 1,300 temporary locations in 2020, but Bloomberg reports that back in 2015, Spirit shared that they took in almost $400 million in revenue, and the number's only grown since. Also, honestly, that's not that huge of a fraction of the over $9 billion we were talking about before just in the U.S. They seem to have room to grow. They could take over more of the market and also just sell more stuff, period. Yeah, and again, the idea that you can have an entire department floor type space that can support itself just on Halloween decorations and costumes is new. But I suspect that that 1,300 locations will be, I don't know, 2,000 in a few years.

I just think that it clearly works the way they're doing it. just think that it clearly works the way they're doing it. It's just that I wish the rest of the year you could rotate out other, because again, once Halloween's over, the spirit of Halloween is going to leave, and that sad department store I have next to my Target is just going to go dark again. He says it could be like the future of retail. I wish that it was like that,

that you could have a series of businesses that could just swap in and sell stuff for a while. Well, and this idea is pretty new. So the thing with Spirit Halloween is that it started as a solution to a struggling year-round store for women's wear. And the name is an accident. This is maybe the funniest fact to me but in 1983 joe marver of san francisco california was the owner of a business called spirit women's discount apparel and that's going to become spirit halloween but he just flipped the word spirit he was like great we're going to go from the spirited fun fun ladies who buy these dresses to Halloween stuff.

Perfect. Is that what they meant by spirit? Because it almost doesn't make sense outside of that context. Which context? The Halloween one? That it's for spirited women? Is that what the idea is? Because it almost seems like a religious thing otherwise. Yeah, I think it's a dress store and it's called Spirit Women's Discount Apparel. So I haven't seen any pictures of that old business, but I'd imagine either the

logo or the vibe is like, you're fun, you're out on the town. So come get one of these. Okay. Okay. The story is apparently Marver, in 1983, he was concerned that he was going to go out of business. And then he was also near a year-round costume store, and he would see that store get flooded with people in October specifically for Halloween. And so his idea was that October, he took all the dresses and stuff out of his store, put it in storage and turned it into a temporary Halloween store. And it went very, very well. Then he tried the next year doing it in a storefront at the mall nearby that was just an empty storefront. That went great. And from there, Spirit Halloween is born. He just aggressively refranchised it and refranchised it and turned it into a bigger and

bigger business. And in 1999, Spencer's Gifts purchased Spirit Halloween. So it's owned by Spencer's Gifts now, and they made it even bigger. And it's just kind of endlessly getting scaled up every year as Halloween grows and as they find places to put it. It's also important to note the kind of circular nature by which things like this happen in a capitalist country, where there's almost like a subconscious thing where you say, well, if there's an entire giant store selling Halloween stuff, Halloween must be a really big deal now. So I guess this is what everyone is doing. So I had better buy some Halloween stuff.

It's almost like a thing can become big because the thing became big and no one wants to be left behind. So in some ways, I think the invention of Spirit Halloween, where it's like, it's an entire store, just Halloween. That helps drive and normalize the growth of it. Because it's like, well, why would the store exist if it wasn't a huge deal? Because, again, it's got, well, why would the store exist if it wasn't a huge deal? Because it's, again, got lots of adult stuff in there. It's also a thing where simultaneously as Spirit is growing, other businesses start building Halloween more into their business model. And in Ernie Smith's article, he talks about across the U.S. in 1986, there's a New Jersey party supply store started by an entrepreneur

named Steve Mandel. It's just this little New Jersey party supply store, but it's called Party City. And if you're in the U.S., you've probably heard of Party City. It's a huge chain now. And Smith says that initially Party City organized its calendar for the year around Christmas. They tried to sell as much stuff at Christmas as possible. But shortly after opening in 1986, they figured out that they should build it around Halloween instead. And that went great. That took off Party City's now a national chain. So I think you see businesses from the Halloween-specific stores to the party stores to huge drugstores like Walgreens, huge big box stores like Target. They're all catering to Halloween and kind of turning part or all of themselves into

Halloween stores in a way that is new. It's from the past couple decades. And I know that a lot of, especially the youth nowadays, are kind of down on capitalism and modern capitalism as it exists in America. But to them, I would just ask one thing. In a perfect communist society, would there be a chain of stores called Party City that has nothing but plastic beads and tiaras and stuff and balloons, and it's literally nothing but party supplies. I think not. Yeah.

It's funny. This is reminding me of when I used to pitch jokes for a large online t-shirt website. And one of their first hit shirts that was held up as an example was the communist party shirt where it's Marx and Lenin and Stalin like drinking and with lampshades on their heads and it's a party you know anyway i i think that would be the store like like dictators of the 20th century doing shots basically but yeah and uh and spirit halloween big part capitalism. And their temporary nature is particularly adapted to the way things are going now. With online shopping and with the Great Recession, more stores are closed in America. I guess I don't know if it's more stores are closed than ever, but Mental Floss says that as of September 2019, they expected 12,000 chain store locations to close that year.

12,000 in just a year. And then with retail getting hit by COVID, online shopping, the Great Recession, the U.S. and Canada are full of empty retail spaces. And if you go to the Spirit Halloween website as of this taping, they have extensive public information about how you, the landlord of a retail space, can turn it into a spirit Halloween. The system is you sign a temporary three-month lease with them, ideally starting August 1st. They also offer what's called a kick-out clause in case you find a permanent tenant by June 1st of that year. Then they say, great, we'll just tear it up, forget it. But they also say that they can make a space work that's as big as 50,000 square feet, five zero, or as small as 3000 square feet. So all the way from 50,000 square feet to just 3000

square feet, the spirit people have like 10 different regional departments ready to go to book a three month lease with you and take it over to sell costumes. It's a very adaptive business. They're just ready to jump on whatever collapses or goes away in the economy. They say, great, for a quarter of the year, costumes, all set. And I know that we've touched on something that's very depressing, which is that there's so much closed retail space in America. And it definitely does feel like there are more empty stores than ever, which is weird because I feel like it's a culture where we still like to get out and shop in person.

Yeah. But we ultimately don't like to buy the things. I think it's that thing that all in-person retailers complain about. People will go and shop and then they'll just go home and buy the same thing off Amazon because they saved $1.50. But the ritual of going out and actually going to a space still seems important to people. So yeah, if this works, and I know that you're getting into stuff about leases and landlords and retail space that maybe is not that interesting. But I think in terms of it should matter to you in terms of just making a city or where you live more livable and that these empty spaces can become something, something, a firework store in June or a Thanksgiving outlet.

And that would be depressing, a Thanksgiving story. This model of it's something that the idea of like, I've even seen like pop-up restaurants. They're just spaces where they just kind of rotate through different styles or whatever, and it seems like they've arrived at the same thing, where it gets back into boring stuff about lease agreements, things like that. But ultimately what it means is instead of having this space that just gets dirtier and more empty and there's just raccoons nesting there,

it's at least a place where people can go and get something, and that's always better. Yeah, and I get that that seems kind of like a crass commercialism thing where the one time we all get out and interact with other humans is when we're shopping. But that's not a distinctly American thing. Like the idea of the marketplace in the city and this being where people get out and gather, that is ancient. That is as old as cities and villages itself. So as we have seen during the lockdown, suddenly not being able to get out and shop among a bunch of strangers, you miss it. You miss it from your life.

Even if you think you don't, I think you do. It's the one thing that forces you out of the house is when you run out of underwear or whatever and you have to go buy some. And you're out among a bunch of other strangers having to do the same thing. It's anything, anything done with other people can be a ritual and, and something is lost when everybody's just sitting at home shopping on their computer. Yeah. Being in Brooklyn again, I'm like re-excited about bodegas because they're, they're like organized and put together, but it is a little bit of a thing of me and the owner of this. I'm just going to walk downstairs and then we're going to see if he has that thing I need. Like, does he have white vinegar?

Got to find out. And I don't know, there's something adventurous about that. It's more enjoyable than an Amazon Prime worker having to like rush it to my doorstep by the end of the day. Yeah. And as part of the fabric of the neighborhood and of your life and your habits, like there's something distinct about those. It's almost because we don't have those here. Like we have convenience stores, we have grocery stores, but the idea of the bodega, this little cramped space just packed with everything. Yeah. And there's like a cat

living there too. Yeah. That stuff matters stuff matters it does the last time i went before the vinegar we needed cat food and i didn't need a bag but the guy was like no no i'm gonna put it in a bag and i was like why then he said like i gotta put it in a bag because when your cat sees it they're gonna be like meow meow meow meow meow And it was just a really fun bit between me and the guy. Like, great. I really, really dig it, man. Good. So more Spirit Halloweens is also good, I think. And also Spirit, another reason they're growing and another reason, you know, maybe there could be other pop-ups taking other things, is that it turns out with a tentpole like Halloween, you can sell stuff pretty far in advance of it for it. Back in 2011, NPR covered a little understood part of the growth of Halloween, which is that big retailers like Target and Macy's and Walgreens were putting out

Halloween stock as early as the beginning of September, the kind of dates Jason was talking about at the start. NPR says that the stores found they were benefiting from being the first to offer those items. So people just do that seasonal buy right away. And they also benefited from going ahead and getting stuff on their shelves if they had empty shelves. They didn't win by keeping it in storage for later. Apparently, they also order their Halloween stock, like all their products about a year in advance if they're a big chain. So, so with the whole supply chain, there's like, there's a foundation where you can have a Halloween store for that three whole month lease because, you know, some people will just knock out getting a costume start of September.

There's no reason to wait. It's bigger than that though. For me, people like me, a lot of people, the month of August is miserable. It is my least favorite time of the year. In much of the country, the weather is the absolute worst it's going to be all year. It's getting close to back to school, so not many people take vacations in August. The summer movies are mostly all done by August. They tend to come out in May, June, July. There's no fun holidays in August. So that period where the calendar flips over and stores take down their back-to-school stuff

and you start to see the pumpkin stuff coming out. It marks the beginning of the fun part of the year. You can see people talking about this on Twitter, everywhere else. That is what Halloween symbolizes. It's not even so much just like strategically, I'm going to buy my pumpkin now so I get the best one and pumpkins tend to last forever. It's that we made it through August and it's over. And now we get to get into the part of the year that's holidays. It's cooler.

The weather's nicer outside. It's more pleasant to get out and do things in most parts of the country. It's less miserable in the hot parts of the country. do things in most parts of the country. It's less miserable in the hot parts of the country. I think that's become a key part of, like, again, we very well know holidays tend to exist because they mark changing of seasons. Like there's rituals for spring, rituals for harvest. We get it. But in the modern distinctly 2021 era, it just seems to have a whole different meaning that like September is here, you know, it's just marking the better, the better part of the year for us. Yeah. That like, I guess it's a trilogy of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas that rules.

It's just a, it's just a great run to be on. Yeah, feels great. Last last thing with the Halloween store model is I wish we could find more businesses to run on this temporary pop-up seasonal kind of thing. There's a certain like spontaneity to it and surprise to it. And it feels like an occasion when you're shopping there. And I've been occasionally around businesses like the Manhattan Quickie Mart promoting the Simpsons movie in the mid 2000s. Or there was a part of L.A. I used to drive through frequently. And then Drake's Clothing Line, OVO, they put up a pop up there and suddenly traffic was hard. But I also saw all these thrilled people, you know, like we if we have all this empty retail space and it's harder than ever to sell brick and mortar stuff, it is it seems exciting to find ways to make it an occasion and an event.

And with the Internet and indexing of things, it makes it relatively easy to put together what places to do it. Yeah. And especially, again, since so many of these locations are kind of depressing otherwise. these locations are kind of depressing. Otherwise, this is why my favorite thing is so many of these adult haunted houses, they set up in like old prisons or asylums or whatever. These are locations that are legitimately tragic and that we can turn this into a fun thing that adults will spend $60 plus to go through and be scared. And it's, it's like, well, this is an actual prison where people were tortured in the 1900s.

It's like, yes, that's so cool. There's something about reclaiming a space just for fun reasons that I find a little, I don't know. It's a little touching, I guess. Again, you could say it's very crass or commercial or whatever. Assume me. I think finding joy in things like that, you know, in just a dumb little store that pops up to tie in with a movie. I don't know.

People went in there and bought some Simpsons stuff, and they were happy for a few minutes. I'll take it. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. Simpson stuff and they were happy for a few minutes. I'll take it. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife.

I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Wenda, speaking of joy, I think we can get into the other takeaway of the main episode. Takeaway number two. The LGBTQ community created a lot of what we associate with modern halloween and jason you in particular found this because the i i had no idea that the lgbt traditions of the 1970s and and institutions they built around halloween became you know a lot of what we celebrate in the in the mainstream u.s culture culture now. And I feel like that also fits in with Halloween stores, because, like, if you go into a Halloween store and buy a costume,

as far as I know, none of those stores are like, well, what's the gender of the person who's going to wear this? Show me ID for it or something. Like, it's just a thing that you're allowed to do now. Yeah, and there's some excellent articles and probably books on the subject, but it's hard to overstate. Like there were cities that still to this day have anti-cross-dressing laws on the books based on whatever the logic was at the time, but the fear of like a man will dress as a woman and do whatever. But the one day of the year they couldn't really enforce those rules was on Halloween. So in a lot of cities, in a lot of these scenes, it became the one day when you could actually party the way you want to

or celebrate the way you want to and do it out in view. And where even in the times when police like did try to crack down or stop or whatever, it just in a city when everyone's doing it, it kind of becomes, you know, cause the laws did not specifically have, you know,

an exception for Halloween, but it was one day when it kind of made no sense to try to enforce those rules because that's always been a part of it, that I will whimsically dress as a woman or vice versa. Yeah, it's almost like an I am Spartacus thing. Like, oh, well, if everyone's dressing strangely, then I, the policeman, just have to keep sitting on my horse, I guess. Okay. Yeah. But the traditions of like parades and Halloween parties is like an adults only thing. parades and Halloween parties is like an adults only thing. This is where a lot of that comes from. And I realize, again, lots and lots of mainstream culture and slang and literally

everything else is stolen from the gaze. I know that. It starts there and then it becomes mainstream. And most people will use those words and slang and practices and never know that's where it came from, including people who would to this day be mortified to find out that it is. This is one thing, one more example of where I rarely hear this discussed. Yeah, I truly had no idea. Beyond what you found, like the key source here is an article and amazing photo gallery for atlas obscura it's by natasha frost also a piece for lgbtqnation.com by the reverend irene monroe a piece of the new statesman by lewis staples and a 2020 piece in the washington post

by samantha schmidt who i'm not related to the most amazing source on this from atlas obscura they cover san francisco's relationship with ha with Halloween in the 20th century. Just to quote him here, quote, from the late 1940s until at least the decriminalization of California's sodomy laws in 1976, friction between the mostly Irish Catholic police department and the city's queer citizens intensified. Police were often openly homophobic, while in the meantime, more and more young LGBT people were moving to the city, seeking the opportunity to be themselves. Clashes ensued, but on Halloween, the residents of Polk Street had a free pass. For the next six decades, that night would be a highlight of San Francisco's gay calendars, end quote.

And Polk Street was a key early gay neighborhood in San Francisco. This article goes so deep on how as San Francisco became more of a center of gay America, and as the police got more and more opposed to it, Halloween was a kryptonite to those police. Halloween was a kryptonite to those police. There was just too much going on between the regular holiday stuff and also gay people making a point of making it a thing for them that they couldn't do the cruel and brutal tactics they wanted to do. And so this is what I was saying earlier, that where we think of Halloween as being detached from any kind of religious tradition, but that I felt like it still had very deep cultural roots. Yeah.

This is part of it, because as these populations, as acceptance has grown over the last few decades, you've seen over that time the growth of Halloween as an adult holiday grow right alongside of it. And I feel like there's a complicated but important relationship there that someone more well-schooled than me could dig into because there's all sorts of things about everything about Halloween. Because I mentioned earlier, there used to be like a vandalism aspect of it,

probably still is. There's kind of a law-breaking and rule-breaking aspect of it. You know, there's the whole thing with like the slutty costumes. And the whole thing is like this is the one time of the year where you would allow yourself to dress as a sexy French nurse or whatever. And for a guy, you know, a tough, burly guy, it's like the one time of year he would let himself dress as a cheerleader, you know, because he thinks it's funny or whatever. There's this like rule breaking countercultural aspect of it where you openly are, you know, in a Christian nation, you're openly decorating your home with like a cartoon devil. All of these things that are the opposite of like christianity right or it's ghouls and monsters and things that are very much and i think it's hard to overstate

for any group that's not normally accepted to have a day of the year when other people are just dressing like a TV character they saw, but people who are able to express themselves in a very over-the-top way, or really doing drag, seriously doing it, how much that means to people, and especially these people more than others. So in that sense, it is a sacred day. Wow. Yeah, and Atlas Obscura talks about it specifically being that for Dragon, for other things in San Francisco.

They say that from the 1940s, San Francisco police had violently enforced an archaic ordinance that forbid posing as a member of the opposite sex. And they also said that drag queens would do a bit where they would put on their drag and then also pin a note to themselves that read, I am a boy, like as a gag meeting the law thing then they quote san francisco photographer donald eckert who said quote there was still a lot of police harassment in the 1970s and wearing drag in public was sometimes used as grounds for arrest so halloween was the only day of the year that it was safe for a man to go out in public wearing a dress or at least this was the accepted wisdom end quote and uh atlas obscura also cites journalist Randy Schiltz,

who wrote a biography of Harvey Milk, and along the way he says, quote, Halloween had been staked out years before as the homosexual high holiday. Gays did, after all, live most of their lives behind masks, end quote. And this existing holiday could be grabbed and seized as a spot for gay people to make a stand and be themselves. And that party grew too. Apparently by 1980, the party had moved from Polk Street in San Francisco to the entire Castro neighborhood because it was just too big. And by 1980, they'd have 30,000 people in the streets celebrating. By the 1990s, attendance swelled to up to half a million. And apparently the city of San Francisco shut down this party starting in 2007. Not really for anti-gay reasons, if I'm reading the sources right. just too humongous and too occasionally violent, just from the kind of event you get when that many people,

some of them adults, some of them drinking, are throwing a thing. Yeah, and you're getting into years there where it's so big that now it is mainstream. And again, a whole bunch of the people, when you get a half million people showing up, now you've got a lot of tourists who actually have no knowledge of any of that history. You know, it's just there to get drunk and wear a funny costume. And that's fine. That's the way it works. I find that fascinating because you see right there the effort to kind of hold back a critical mass movement and that was using halloween and the holiday basically as a pretense

so you can track the growth of that of those events right along with the the the movement for you know acceptance of these groups right in that same exact same time period. It eventually got to the point where the authorities couldn't stop it. Yeah, it was just too widely accepted and too common. And you even see a conservative reactionary pushback. Irene Monroe writes about the history of hell houses in that article. We'll link from lgbtqnation.com because the Hell House was something organized by Jerry Falwell and others as an evangelical Christian, I guess, educational situation. Like instead of going to a haunted house, go to a Hell House where you mainly learn that Halloween

and homosexuality are both evil was the point of them. And far as I can tell, that did not take off. I've never heard about one of these or been offered one of these. Oh, wow. You did not have hell houses where you grew up? Seriously? I'm not joking. This was where I'm from. This was a common thing.

It's basically a haunted house, only it's a Christian haunted house where it shows you like it's literally people in hell for being sinners. Or it's because it's like the same setup as a haunted house where it's like staging scenes to scare you. Only the scene is like a person in bed dying of AIDS or an addict who is dying from an overdose or people in hell for rejecting Christ or whatever. And they were trying to set this up as an alternative to Halloween because, again, Halloween, it's, you know, if you grew up in like a strict evangelical household, you were absolutely told this is the devil's holiday. Like this is not a Christian holiday. You should not be trick-or-treating or celebrating this.

Like everything from putting on a costume or a little boy dressing like a female ballerina. All of those things go against everything about what religion is or what strict Christianity is. And this pushback in the 80s by the evangelicals, the fact that it was so weak and ineffective in the face of this tsunami of Halloween, that right there is to me modern America in a nutshell. That the country becoming more secular and that all of this, that it was powerless to stop this from happening. And yeah, like you said, it being too gay of a holiday, I feel like was absolutely part of it as part of the pushback. But just in general, seen as a holiday for debauchery or whatever, again, as it becoming a more adult thing, they did try to stop it. And the fact that a lot of you hearing this are surprised to hear

that hell houses are a thing is probably a sign of how successful that was. Yeah, man, because like I, my specific religious upbringing was not evangelical. And I don't think I was super close with anybody evangelical. But I guess I just didn't, I wasn't close enough with any kids who were going to go to that to hear about it, because I'm I just didn't, I wasn't close enough with any kids who were going to go to that to hear about it. Because I'm sure it was happening. And like you say, it didn't, it clearly didn't work if nobody told me, even though I was in an incredibly evangelically Christian part of Northern Illinois around Chicago there. Or maybe they were just too fancy to do it. I don't know. Because yeah, it seems like a real Chick tract kind of vibe.

And I wasn't presented with it. But I'm sure it was going on, like you say. Yeah, we grew up in very different parts of the country. Same state, but different planets. of like Louis Staples writing in The New Statesman in particular talks about Halloween being a time when all bets were off, and quote, going all out to look fabulous was for once encouraged, end quote. And he's writing as a gay person and also a British person. So this is part of, I think, also a low key part of Halloween's growth worldwide is that gay communities worldwide can also benefit the same way. Yes. And that will also link to great Washington Post article by Samantha Schmidt, who covers the 2020 cancellation of October Halloween events for the LGBTQ community in Washington, DC. Quote, events catering to the community are typically planned throughout the month of October, known as LGBTQ History Month, and many of those have now taken place only online. The National Trans Visibility March during the first weekend of October was mostly virtual.

SMYAL, which is a group that supports LGBTQ youths in D.C., was unable to host its national coming out day dance and hosted its popular fall brunch virtually, end quote. Like in that city and probably others, the pandemic preventing these in-person gatherings also kind of highlights how much happens around the holiday in that community some places. It's a perfect tent pole for the very necessary work of making those folks visible and advocating for them. Yeah. And then again, gets into the paradox of Halloween for some is a day to dress up as just something random. But also some people pick their costumes as kind of an expression of who they wish they could be or how they wish they could dress. And I guess I'm thinking of a lot of like young dudes dressing up as the joker every year and it's like they see themselves as like yeah you know it's he's a badass and so they're kind of expressing their own values by what they dress

up as but for some people it's it's literally that it's a chance to to go all out in a way that wouldn't be acceptable even if they're out in a way that wouldn't be acceptable even if they're out of a closet it wouldn't be acceptable to be that over the top of how they're they're dressing or they wouldn't like their personality they wouldn't be that open with it but this is the day of the year when that's it's like no you've got a blank check for today and i uh the i guess also my version of the joker thing is the multiple times I dressed as Bones from Star Trek, Dr. McCoy. That's someone who would be great to be. And yeah, it was cool to do.

The way you dress for Halloween, that says a lot about your personality, whether you know it or not. If somebody like me who I never, like as soon after I was like 10 years old, I stopped doing it because it's like, no, I'll just look stupid. Well, that was expressing something about my personality that I was afraid. I was envious of the other people who could like just wear anything and dress up in a crazy whatever. Whether you're talking about a monster costume or a ball gown or that they would make themselves look scary or silly or whatever. The fact that I wouldn't do it says something. And the fact that this is what those people chose, that says something. The fact that a lot of people see that as like the one day they can wear something kind

of overtly sexual that they would consider scandalous any other day of the year, that says something. It says something about what they're repressing the rest of the year. For some people, I'm sure they just pick whatever costume was left because they wait until the day before to find something. But it means something for a lot of people. It really does. It would not have spread the way it has if it didn't. Yeah, absolutely right. Man. Were you, in your youth, did you go door-to-door trick-or-treating the way in the movies? Or was your neighborhood already past that? Yeah, our suburb, like we learned to use pillowcases as bags and would go in, usually like three or four of us in a group, usually no parents.

It was great. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I was still from an era when that was a thing. I get the sense that today it's much much more rare i haven't had a child show up at my house in probably six years and i know they have organized events at malls or other specific places where you can go because i think the the fear of strangers is so much higher something we will get into in the bonus episode um and so I do feel like that's part of what has been lost for the kid version of the holiday.

But they still, people still get out and do stuff. They just, it's not so much about, like we would literally go to strangers' homes. And this is something you still see in the old cartoons or whatever. It's like you're just walking randomly through the city asking strangers for candy. And they had it most of the time. If your porch light was on, I mean, you had candy. But I get the sense that that's not. I'm sure I have no doubt some communities still do it exactly like that.

I think that is now largely considered old fashioned in much of the world. Now I'm remembering there was one house in our neighborhood where one year the owners like set up a pretty elaborate homemade made out of cardboard boxes like Halloween maze inside of their house. It wasn't in the yard. It was the rooms of their house. They turned it into a weird maze. And I'm sure if our parents knew they'd be like, that leads to a trap door, doesn't it? Don't go in there. to a trap door doesn't it don't go in there that's but that's so cool because again this is the type of creativity where that may be the one time of the year they would get to do something

like that you know and you tell yourself it's for the kids it's like yeah but you you planned all that and thought it up and you did it like it was an expression of something you wanted your house to be the cool house. That's great. I find that heartwarming and inspiring. Maybe as a last thing, too, I'm kind of amazed it took this long to get Halloween-specific stores, right? Because there's such an appetite to make something out of this holiday and feel joy about it and feel community about it.

And it's like if sports bars got invented this decade or something, or if carnivals got invented this decade. It's amazing that this guy with a dress store was the first one to do the temporary kind so recently. Yeah. And I think what had to change with the culture was how much money people were willing to spend. Because, again, kids' costumes, like the little plastic ones they would sell in grocery stores, which is where mine would always come from. Those were, at the time, like a couple of bucks. And candy is cheap. So the idea of, because, you know, it's not like at Christmas people will spend thousands of dollars decorating their homes in rich neighborhoods.

You know, they've got the lights and they've got professionals that come and hook it all up. And that was never a Halloween thing. You would just carve out a pumpkin and, you know, a pumpkin doesn't cost anything. And you spend a couple of hours carving it and stabbing your hand three or four times. And, you know, the most you would have to spend is in the bandages and possibly an emergency room visit. But otherwise, culturally, it was an inexpensive holiday because Thanksgiving, you know, there's cost and travel involved. Christmas, of course, is half of your yearly household budget gets spent at Christmas. But Halloween was always more about the ritual, but not necessarily spending things. the ritual, but not necessarily spending things. I think sometimes it takes capitalism a while to catch up with, okay, but how can we get people to each person spend like a hundred bucks on Halloween? Um, and I think that there's almost a critical mass where once you decide, it's like the thing with engagement rings, it's like everyone has to have an engagement ring.

It's like, you got to understand understand that that is not an ancient tradition. That was that was the thing invented by jewelers. And it's I think it's just a case where they seized an opportunity. And again, you had a certain category of people who, you know, maybe had some disposable income. And this was a way to spend it that they... It's like, well, if I've given up the prospect of ever owning a home, I'm going to go ahead and splurge a little bit on Halloween because I'm going to find some kind of joy in my life because Lord knows I can't afford a vacation, but I can afford a fun costume and my friends can get together and we can all drink in our costumes.

And that's, so be it. Our situations are spirit Halloweens. Spooky. It was inside the house or inside the apartment, inside the rented property the whole time. Yes. America is empty. It has become a Halloween store. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Jason Pargin for pulling back the mask of these stores and of the whole holiday.

Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the surprising origins and persistence of the Razorblades and Candy myth. Don't worry, it's essentially a myth. Also, there are amazing reasons we think about it at all. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than five dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Halloween stores with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the seasonal Halloween store business might be the future of all retail. And takeaway number two, the LGBTQ community created a lot of what we associate with modern

Halloween. Plus a ton more stuff in the numbers about the increasingly huge, increasingly international phenomenon around Halloween. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. He's great. Jason Pargin is at JohnDiesAtTheEN on Twitter. That's JohnDiesAtTheEnd minus a letter. His new book is entitled Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick. That's written under the soon-to-be-retired pen name David Wong. You can find that at your local bookseller, or you can follow the episode links, or whatever else you want to do. Just get those novels in your hands, man. They're great. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. Tons of great articles, in particular a National Geographic piece by Brian Handwork that's about the phenomenon of Halloween going global.

A tremendous piece called The Halloween Industrial Complex that's by Ernie Smith of tedium.co. And an astounding article and photo gallery by Natasha Frost for Atlas Obscura covering the Halloween history of gay San Francisco. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show.

And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.