Minutes after Facebook went offline on Monday, Twitter turned the company’s Menlo Park HQ into a Spirit Halloween store. The same thing happened when the Cinerama Dome and the Pacific Theatres location the Grove shut their doors last year. The spooky season emporium’s well-documented propensity to gobble up defunct spaces the instant fall signals its arrival has been memed again and again.
So, what to make of the authentic orange banner that went up on October 1 over the entrance to the old Rage nightclub in West Hollywood promising a pop-up Spirit location? Turns out it was merely dressed in costume as a Spirit Halloween store to-be, reports WeHoTimes. “You’ve been tricked” read a post on wehomega.club.com, the official website for what’s to come to the former Rage space. “Thanks for playing along Spirit Halloween! But we do have a real TREAT coming very soon!”
The beloved nightclub shut down during COVID after almost four decades on Santa Monica Boulevard, but was rescued by singer Lance Bass last March. Bass and his partners plan to reopen the joint as “the biggest gay nightclub in the USA” later this year.
The singer, known for his elaborate Halloween costumes and home décor, was recruited by Spirit Halloween in August to serve as a company ambassador. His first job is judging candidates for a contest seeking a “Chief Spirit Officer” for the costume shop chain. Maybe this is his way of drumming up candidates.
This year there are more than 1,400 pop-up Spirit stores across the country, and more than two dozen in L.A. They’re materializing inside dead chain stores like Sears, with locations in Glendale and West Covina, departed Toys “R” Us branches in Porter Ranch and Newhall, and in the shell of the historic 1931 NuWilshire Theater in Santa Monica, most recently home to Performance Bicycle.
The actual Spirit location closest to Rage might be the ex-Dollar Tree near Santa Monica and Vine. The abandoned store is not long for this world, as the one-acre property is being sold as a redevelopment site. What horrors await?!
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