And so he realizes - Joe's like, I'm on to something. MALONE: If - OK, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics has an inflation calculator. LUSE: I was just going to ask you, because you're living on Planet Money. MALONE: I don't have any sense of how much that's worth in 1983. And he sells $100,000 worth of merchandise in 30 days. The next year, Joe leases a temporary space at a nearby mall, what today we would call a pop-up. I mean, if you've got to take a whole building's worth of dresses and put them in storage every Halloween, I feel like you haven't quite figured out what you are yet. And I would say at this point, Joe is starting to get into something, right? But he's not yet achieved the status that is yet to come. And he fills his store with Halloween-centric things. And when it does, Joe puts his dresses in storage. So eventually down the line, this costume store across the street, it moves locations. MALONE: This is an interesting observation, that Halloween costumes are temporary clothes. He sees a line around the corner with people trying to get in to buy Halloween costumes, mind you, temporary outfits, while his store full of permanent year-round apparel is struggling. And he sees something that just really gets his goat. So one October day, Joe looks out across the street at this costume shop. LUSE: I wouldn't say that the name of the store was optimized, but just you wait. I'm so sorry I messed up that confusing series of words. LUSE: Just Spirit Women's Discount Apparel. MALONE: Spirit Women's Discount Dress Apparel (ph). It was a dress store called Spirit Women's Discount Apparel. And he was the owner of this struggling store in the Bay Area. So the story starts with a man named Joe Marver sometime in the early '80s. It all began about 40 years ago, when Spirit Halloween was just a twinkle in the eye of its founder. It's a tale that is part capitalist success story, part cultural narrative, and a history of how one store became a kind of grim reaper for American retailers. LUSE: Today, Kenny and I are talking Spirit Halloween. MALONE: It just sits over the death bed of the American mall, takes advantage of it a little bit, helps keep it alive a little bit. And it's because Spirit Halloween is known, for once a year, taking over abandoned retail stores and struggling shopping centers around the country and turning them into centers for everything spooky. When the government shuts down, people Photoshopped Spirit banners over the White House. When Facebook stock started tanking, there were memes showing Spirit Halloween banners on their Silicon Valley office. Bad humor or not, these memes show up everywhere there's even the hint of impending failure. And then someone has Photoshopped a Spirit Halloween banner over it, as if Buckingham Palace had become empty retail space, which is brutal. MALONE: So it appears to be Buckingham Palace. LUSE: I'm talking about Spirit Halloween. So here's a meme from after Queen Elizabeth died. This not so little company has been around for decades, and it's the inspiration for a heck of a lot of memes. LUSE: Halloween, of course, means the arrival of a business that pops up across the country every spooky season. It's an "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?" shirt for all of you '90s kids out there. And for the occasion, I'm bringing on a spooky enthusiast, Planet Money's very own Kenny Malone. LUSE: Halloween is less than a week away. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR.
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