Spirit is the joke, and Spirit is in on the joke. Last year comedian Nick Lutsko made a mock theme song for Spirit Halloween that went viral (“Jeff Bezos murdered Barnes & Noble, Jeff Bezos murdered Sears, Jeff Bezos murdered Toys ‘R’ Us, but Spirit Halloween is here.”) Spirit responded by sending Lutsko some money and commissioning more theme songs. It has even served as a pro-labor symbol. The artist Danielle Baskin printed a banner and unfurled it in front of Google’s San Francisco offices as a commentary on empty tech campuses. The orange Spirit Halloween banner is now so ubiquitous it has become a meme synonymous with impending doom and reuse, Photoshopped over the White House and the Facebook sign. The list of sites on the company website reads like an obituary section: the former Barneys, the former J&R Music, the former Topshop, and former Men’s Warehouses, Toys “R” Uses, and Planet Fitnesses. In New York City, there are more than ten Spirits. This year, the company opened 1,410 seasonal stores - more than ever - and thanks to the retail apocalypse, it had its pick of locations. In a retail landscape littered with death and haunted by the specter of Amazon, Spirit Halloween has thrived. The sight was jarring but not actually surprising. A space that had once been occupied by the most sophisticated department store on earth, a place known for being avant-garde (Andy Warhol shopped there) and extremely expensive, would soon be selling polyester Cleopatra costumes, Michael Myers masks, and six-foot-tall animatronic killer clowns. Then, in August, a literal Grim Reaper logo appeared in the window, a sign not of death but (after a fashion) retail resurrection: Spirit Halloween was moving in. For a year and a half after the death of Barneys, the fabled department store’s Seventh Avenue location sat empty, spooking passersby who remembered its glory days and its gruesome demise.
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