PUBLIC LISTENING: SPIRIT HALLOWEEN
A SUNDAY IN BAY RIDGE
Spirit Halloween is a new American institution. It’s a temporary autonomous zone where closed drug stores and big box outlets become filled with sexy steampunk costumes and giant animatronic skeletons. Its logo looks like it was designed by the Insane Clown Posse. It’s a Halloween destination in its own right. The people at Spencer’s Gifts have done a good job building the brand since acquiring it in 1999. There are over 1,500 stores across the United States, and Spencer Spirit Holdings took in $1.86 billion in 2023, with more than half of that revenue attributed to a store that makes all of its money in just a couple months.
Spirit Halloween is the source of endless jokes. What’s up with the music they play in there, though? I hadn’t been inside a Spirit in a minute, but it was a Sunday afternoon in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I remembered that I had nothing scheduled for next week’s blog. So, here it is, for the unprecedented second time in a month: another edition of Public Listening, presented by John’s Music Blog.
5:00: The Hollies “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”
This was a barebones Spirit. The concrete floors were scuffed. There wasn’t a single oversized animatronic anything. Screaming children ran around adults who were contemplating the purchase of a Minion costume. It was very busy. “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” made everything go in slow motion, like I was existing inside of a television show set in the current day whose aesthetics were meant to capture the feeling of a movie made in the 1990s that was set in the 1960s.
5:02: Imagine Dragons “Sharks”
I started to have the feeling that there would be no Halloween music played here. Once again, I found myself standing in the middle of an American retailer, writing about listening to Imagine Dragons. I stared at a selection of plastic swords, axes, and spiked bats. On the other side of the rack were a grip of hooded phantom masks, the same kind my high school bass and drum freakout band used to wear. We once set up a tent in the middle of a punk house basement and played inside of it.
5:06: MEDUZA (Feat. Dermot Kennedy) “Paradise”
“Paradise” came on after an ad for a Spirit Halloween charity initiative. This location exists in the former site of a Modell’s, a sporting goods megastore that filed for bankruptcy in 2020. There are a lot of large empty storefronts all around America; Spirit turns urban blight into a holiday bonanza. In 2024, they are opening up a few Spirit Christmas locations. The YouTube video for “Paradise” has 81 million views, but I’ve never heard of the song or the artist. I live in a world where a hardcore band whose biggest music video has less than five million views is considered by many to be beyond the pale.
5:09: Ray Parker Jr. “Ghostbusters”
Here was the most Halloween-centric song yet, a song that rips off Huey Lewis and the News to great effect. I found the section I was looking for, the section that I alluded to at the top of the blog: the steampunk section. It was to the right of the sexy skeleton section. It was well stocked but seemingly not so popular in Bay Ridge. Shoppers could choose between the “Victorian Steampunk” outfit (bowler hat) and the “Dapper Steampunk” outfit (top hat); they could buy goggles or gloves or a full “Queen of Steam” costume.
5:13: Franz Ferdinand “Take Me Out”
A lot of the employees at the Bay Ridge Spirit Halloween branch seemed to be somewhat alt looking. I saw some piercings. I saw some colored hair. I also saw a full Hawk Tuah display: shirts, jumpsuits, and trucker hats. Something about the whole Hawk Tuah thing feels like it was catapulted in from George W. Bush’s second term—from the peak era of Spike TV. There are a lot of disparate energies colliding right now. I heard someone say that the size of this particular Spirit Halloween location was on the smaller side. It only took up part of the Modell’s, the rest of which I heard is getting turned into a family fun center.
5:17: Fall Out Boy “Centuries”
One thing that I could not find were any Trump or Harris masks. An employee pointed me to a row of costumes, but I still couldn’t spot any political apparel. Pretty surprising: Using sales data, Spirit Halloween’s “Presidential Mask Index” was able to correctly predict the presidential winner in every election between 1996 and 2016. I can’t find any public data related to 2020. Who knows what’s happening in 2024. If there truly were no presidential masks at this Spirit location, and I wasn’t just tripping, it is a sign of… Something. You better believe there will be no blog post next Tuesday. I might take next Friday off, too.
Here was the first unimpeachably Halloween-related song to be played. It sounds like a budget version of the Weeknd doing “Thriller.” It’s the exact kind of NPC pop that America deserves to be listening to as they shop for Harry Potter costumes at a closed sporting goods outlet. I might’ve had a hard time clocking a Trump mask, but I had no problem finding every other kind of IP imaginable.
5:24 Robert J. Walsh “Count Dracula”
Two spooky tunes in a row. Now we are cooking. “Count Dracula” originally came out in 2008 and has a general dance pop feel that corresponds with that moment in time. It was composed by a man who has a formidable catalog of Hollywood library music under his belt. I would like for Spirit Halloween to play the new Chuckyy single. It’s the rare song that has the ability to rearrange my dome every time I listen to it. It’s also seasonally appropriate. I was still looking for those damn masks.
5:27: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts “I Love Rock ‘N Roll”
I have rarely if ever dressed up for Halloween as an adult. I’m just going to go out and say it, because there is really no way around it, and I think it would be disingenuous for me to not lay it out on the line the way I’m about to lay it out on the line, which I am aware is embarrassing but also more true than not: It’s hard to want to dress up for Halloween when your whole life has been an absurd cartoon. I’m not sure if I feel that way anymore, but I did for 20 years. Around this time in 2011, I was living in Los Angeles, in a basement behind the fast food chain Jollibee, gearing up to go on a Japanese tour. Now I’m sober, standing in a Spirit Halloween. A kid in a Cartman mask almost hit me with a rubber mallet.
5:31: Mayday Parade “Black Cat”
Mayday Parade is a Florida band that I associate with both Myspace and the Warped Tour, though I don’t believe I have heard their music before. To me, “Black Cat” sounds like the band Say Anything, an emo act that I didn’t listen to until I was in my late 20s and “rediscovering” emo music. It’s also vaguely Halloween-inspired, I guess, though that doesn’t seem to necessarily be a guiding principle of this in-store playlist. After some research, it seems like the same playlist that gets played at Spencer’s Gifts. Two young people with large plastic swords were fighting in an aisle and screaming the “Hawk Tuah catchphrase” at each other. I had to get back on the street.