are you telling me americans have stores that open up SPECIFICALLY for halloween and just. dont exist any other time of the year. you people are insane
Imagine an empty storefront. Some business that closed years ago. The building stands empty, unused for literal months. And then boom. Fall comes around and there’s a Spirit Halloween. There’s no escape.
what the fuck 😁
Yeah this is a thing
Are you serious
Yes and they are divine gifts of beauty and cheap plastic lawn decorations.
… I honestly assumed that the existence of Halloween stores was just a running joke in American TV shows.
No they’re very real
Can confirm this phenomenon also occurs in Canada
It’s fun
Oh, it’s a blast.
Wait, so during non-halloween they are just empty? Like, they don’t switch between seasonal decorations (like christmas, easter, etc), they just…close and wait for next year???
Yeah, it’s not a permanent store. A company will rent an empty building for the 2-3 months before halloween, sell halloween stuff, and then clean everything up and disappear until the following year. And they’ll usually set up in different buildings from year to year. They just find any good-sized empty store space that will give them a cheap, short-term lease.
It’s so temporary that the halloween stores don’t even have a real sign, they just hang up a banner outside:
So you’re telling me that every year for a month or two the Spirit of Halloween possesses a dead building then disappears?
that is exactly what we’re telling you
Real talk on how the hell this works for the Non-Americans going “how are this many empty stores available???” The US is full of capitalist ruins.
Yes, occasionally Spirit Halloween ends up in small empty spaces in a downtown if the stars align just right. But overwhelmingly the end up in strip malls or freestanding big box stores. You HAVE to drive to them. Nobody lives within walking distance.
Freestanding big box stores are built entirely to order and are meant to be replaced semi-frequently. It’s cheaper to just build a newer, bigger one at another location while promising the local government “so much economic growth!!!” that they cut them a deal on the property taxes for X number of years… and the megachain meanwhile knows exactly when that term is up and is already hunting for a new location to start the process anew.
It gets worse.
These buildings are so shoddily constructed and so purpose built they’re almost unusable by anyone except the original builder. To the point where some big box retailers have challenged the assessment of the building while its in use and generating $30 million in profit to have it valued based on resale value as if it was empty and abandoned.. AND HAVE WON.
It gets worse.
HOW CAN IT GET WORSE?!?! Many of these properties also have deed restriction on them. That specifies if sold, they can’t be to a competing retailer. So if it was a big box department store, it may specify that it can’t be sold to anyone that sells competing merchandise… so basically everything from lawnmowers to food to clothing. what the hell can you put in there?
So the resale value of the building is zero, Which when you go to make the assessment… well I guess no taxes are owed.
And these deed restriction generally last decades. There ARE good reasons for deed restrictions like that. They’re usually used for agricultural land so it specifies it has to stay agricultural OR for industrial land with contamination issues. You don’t want someone to sell a lead smelter to a shell company and then have them sell it to someone to turn into residential housing. It’s just taken a very, very specific form here.
So you have thousands of these abandoned structures all around the US that are just slowly rotting and are unsaleable. They might also be being used to show financial “losses” to reduce taxable income more.
Spirit sweeps in and is “hey, wanna extract a bit more money without in any way disrupting this cycle?” and rents the building for two months and does not give a damn about what terrible repair it is in. They won’t be using it next year. There will be a thousand newly abandoned store to inhabit next year!
The US is littered with building corpses and once a year, necromancy brings them back to life to sell us more things!
op here. holy shit dude
Don’t forget each one of these rotting corpses of a big box store also comes with a parking lot that takes up enough land to build an entire neighborhood which will sit there doing absolutely nothing for years between a store closing and the eventual day when the land is bought and the building is town down to build another identically awful one. The pavement stops water from entering the soil, making floods more likely during rainstorms and preventing aquifers from refilling. It also increases the ambient heat of the area and worsens global warming because it absorbs massive amounts of heat from the sun and then radiates it at night. For no reason. No one can use the parking lot because it’s private property owned by the real estate company and they’ll tow your car for being on their unused and unusable property. Useful land left completely ruined for a capitalist shell game. It’s a nightmare in every possible way.
