In early September, Marlene Rivera, a pho-
tographer in Houston, made an announce-
ment on Twitter. “Ladies we are no longer
dressing up as sexy cops,” she wrote. “Our
new sexy costumes are mail carriers.”
Ms. Rivera, 24, never misses a chance to
dress up on Halloween. In recent years
she’s transformed herself into an astronaut,
Wonder Woman and Supergirl.
Her festivities this year will be more low-
key. She and five friends are planning a
night of board games and drinking adult
beverages outdoors at a
friend’s beach house in Galve-
ston, Texas. They will still be
wearing costumes, and because
of the pandemic and fraught po-
litical climate, she wants her
choice to send a message.
Ms. Rivera feels as strongly about the
costume she won’t wear as the one she will.
“Wearing a police officer costume is no
longer appropriate,” she said, before adding
that she would be a mail carrier. “I felt this
was an opportunity to show appreciation
and express the importance of mail-in bal-
lots for voting.”
This has been quite the year for postal
workers. They’ve gone from unsung heroes
in the perpetual shadow of the UPS Guy in
“Legally Blonde” to applauded frontline
workers. Some have gained fame on Insta-
gram or had beers made in their honor. Now
they are being saluted in another way:
Americans planning to dress up as mail car-
riers for Halloween.
Ms. Rivera bought her costume from
Amazon, where there are a handful of op-
tions. Her kit includes a vest, cap, mail stor-
age bag, even letters with stamps on them.
She is going to wear the costume with a
skirt and knee high boots to make it sexier.
Other Americans are buying mail carrier
costumes straight from the source: the
United States Postal Service. For $24.95
you can get a costume for a child; one for a
dog that has attached arms that carry a pri-
ority mail box costs $17.99. “Initially, we of-
fered a limited quantity of the costumes,
which sold out and were replenished,” said
Sara Martin, a spokeswoman for the Postal
Service.
Caitlin Galeotti, 28, a publicist who lives
in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of
Brooklyn, couldn’t believe that the post of-
fice sold Halloween costumes.
“After reading about U.S.P.S.’s fi-
nancial crisis and how consumers
can help, I went on their website
to do my small part by stocking
up on stamps,” she wrote in an
email. “I quickly learned they
sell more than that.
“I’m not usually the type to
dress up pets, but as soon as I
saw the U.S.P.S. cos-
tume, I knew I wanted
to get it for Cleo,” Ms.
Galeotti said, refer-
ring to her dog, whom
she plans to take with
her to drop off candy at
local post offices. (She
also bought herself a crop top sold
on the same website.)
Meryl Pataky, 37, a sculp-
tor in Oakland, Calif., boughta costume for her 50-pound pit mix, Oscar,
even though only one size, extra small, was
left. “I bought it anyway,” Ms. Pataky said.
“I felt that was a really cute way to show
and give my support.”
Taanya Spates, 27, who has worked as a
mail carrier in Charlotte, N.C., for almost six
years, is not surprised that her uniform is
suddenly a hot costume.
Ms. Spates has an Instagram account,
Puerto_Rican_Pecan, on which she posts
pictures of herself working. She drives a
mail truck to a residential neighborhood
and then walks five to six miles every day to
complete her deliveries. Before the pan-
demic she would get around 400 likes per
picture. Now, she gets 60,000.
“I think a lot of people were at home, and
they weren’t doing much, and essential
workers got highlighted,” she said.
And Ms. Spates appreciates the coming
homage, though she herself will be a but-
terfly this year.
“I wouldn’t dress up as a mail carri-
er for Halloween because it’s my ca-
reer, but it’s super-flattering,” she
said. “We work all year, during
rain, sleet, snow and now lit-
erally pandemics.”A Salute to Heroes Who Are Facing a Frightful Deluge
Mail carrier costumes
for children sold by the
United States Postal
Service, far left, cost
$24.95 (hat and bag
included). A costume
for a carrier’s
traditional foe, left,
costs $17.99.IMAGES VIA U.S.P.S.By ALYSON KRUEGERPostal worker costumes signal
gratitude for navigating the
pandemic and mail-in ballots.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 Y D3
Spirit Halloween is once again open for
business. The store known for selling cos-
tumes and spooky fall décor at temporary
pop-up locations across the United States is
making bullish moves in a brutal year for
retailing.
According to the company, it has opened
more than 1,400 storefronts nationwide,
more than last year — even as competitors
scaled back significantly because of the
pandemic. Party City, for example, slashed
the number of Halloween City pop-up stores
it is opening this fall by 91 percent.
It is almost comforting to see this chain,
which is masterly at popping up in recently
shuttered storefronts, reappear like clock-
work this year, a reminder of seasonal
change and the grim reaper of American op-
portunism, when so many other routines
have been disrupted.
At one Spirit location, in the husk of a de-
funct supermarket at an outdoor mall in
Richmond, Va., nothing appeared different
from previous years, aside from a small
sanitizer dispenser near the entrance, deco-
rated with skeletal hands.
Customers were greeted by a leering,
red-eyed animatronic clown, emitting
groans from behind sharp teeth. Beyond,
the cavernous space offered a vast array of
costume options including vampires, cheer-
leaders, wizards, presidential candidates,
non-copyright-violating riffs on “Tiger
King” characters, and a surprisingly large
selection of costumes in the style of the
masked musician Marshmello.
There were few visible nods to the many
crises that have gripped the country this
year, aside from a row of obligatory hazmat
suits and a “Karen” costume — complete
with a blond wig, binoculars, fake hundred
dollar bills, and a T-shirt that said, “Can I
Speak to the Manager?”
The reason for Spirit Halloween’s dura-
bility is closely linked with its business
strategy of taking over temporary leases.
The store “is out of step with most normal
retail concepts,” Andy Mantis, a retail ana-
lyst for the firm 1010Data, wrote in an email.
“In 2019, typical party stores generated 29
percent of their annual sales from Labor
Day through Halloween.”
Spirit, however, “generated 90 percent
over that window,” he wrote, noting that in
2020, “Covid-19-driven temporary retail clo-
sures earlier in the year did nothing to hurt
their sales outlook.”
And this year, the temporary lease ap-
proach may be an even bigger advantage,
Mr. Mantis wrote, citing lower real estate
costs as a result of “the tidal wave of 2020
retail bankruptcies and store consolida-
tions.” In other words, Spirit is merrily
feasting on the corpses of its fallen foes.
It’s not all buckets of candy for the com-
pany, of course.
The National Retail Foundation pre-
dicts that there will be some $8 billion in
Halloween spending this year — a re-
duction of approximately 8 percent
from last year, which the foundation
says will likely result from decreased
participation in haunted houses,
trick-or-treating and parties.
Mr. Mantis said that Spirit saw a de-
crease in sales “in the high single digits”
this September compared with last year,
though the peak of the season has not yet
arrived. (And that decrease is just a blip, he
said, “compared to the 50-90 percent de-
clines in total discretionary spending dur-
ing the height of the pandemic” in the coun-
try at large.)
Katie Thomas, a retail analyst with the
Kearney Consumer Institute, thinks Spiritmay struggle with certain headwinds. She
noted that customers are looking to stream-
line their shopping trips to a single destina-
tion in order to reduce their exposure to
crowds, which could provide “an overall
challenge with specialty stores” like Spirit,
as opposed to big box competitors like Wal-
mart and Target.
Ms. Thomas also believes that customers
will spend less than usual on costumes and
more on home décor, citing the “go big or go
home mentality” exemplified by Home De-
pot’s massive skeleton. “Right now on their
website, it looks like it’s still mostly costume
first,” she said of Spirit. “I really think that
décor is kind of the way to go.”
“It’s something that people know they
can do; they can really lean in to the deco-
rating. Costume parties and trick-or-treat-
ing, it still feels up in the air, if not unsafe,”
she said.
In a news release provided by a spokes-
man, Spirit urged consumers to follow Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Prevention
guidelines with socially distanced celebra-
tions, including “contactless trick-or-treat-
ing,” “virtual ghostly storytelling sessions”
and “devilish midnight treats left for your
neighbors.” (The company also said, in a
statement to The New York Times, that it
was offering several items to support “con-
tactless trick-or-treating” including “treat
bags on a pole.”)
In an interview last month with the Na-
tional Retail Foundation, Spirit’s chief exec-
utive, Steven Silverstein, said: “We believeHalloween restores hopefulness and pro-
vides an outlet for escape, something we all
need now more than ever. With many of our
stores now open, we’re seeing encouraging
initial results and are anticipating a Hallow-
een on par with last year.”
Spirit was founded in 1983 by a San Fran-
cisco dress retailer named Joseph Marver,
whose store was struggling to attract
customers one October. Inspired by the
lines outside a nearby costume shop, he put
all of his dresses in storage and filled his
store with Halloween-centric items, which
sold quickly. The next year he did the same
thing at an empty mall storefront and
moved $100,000 of merchandise in a month.
He kept at it, adding more storefronts each
year, until he eventually sold the business to
Spencer’s Gifts in 1999.
“I didn’t invent temporary sales,” Mr.
Marver told The Seattle Times in 2000. “But
I feel like I invented temporary Halloween.”
Two decades later, Spirit has become a
Halloween mainstay, its storefronts as em-
blematic of the holiday’s approach as pump-
kins on porches. It’s also a reliable social
media punchline; after the president’s
Covid-19 diagnosis, someone tweeted an im-
age of the White House adorned with the
store’s iconic grim reaper logo, captioned,
“Spirit Halloween is ready to make its
move.”
“It’s a little bit funny to me that the world
is falling apart, but Spirit Halloween per-
sists,” said Nick Lutsko, 29, a songwriter
from Chattanooga, Tenn. In September, Mr.Lutsko went viral with a mock theme song
for Spirit that he posted on Twitter.
This is theme for Spirit Halloween
They got ghouls, and new locations on
every other street
saving the global economy.In one verse, Mr. Lutsko claimed jokingly
that the store promised him “$1,000 for 100
retweets.” The song ended up receiving
nearly 9,000 retweets, and he was excited
when a Spirit representative did indeed
compensate him by sending several thou-
sands of dollars to Mr. Lutsko’s Venmo ac-
count. (“His song gave us serious goose
bumps, so let’s just say his Venmo account
is significantly happier these days,” the
company said in a statement; it would not
reveal the exact dollar amount, however,
adding that “some things are just between
us and the fog machines.”)
Mr. Lutsko said he was inspired to write
the song after visiting a Spirit location with
his wife, a prolific Halloween decorator, in
early September; the approach of the holi-
day offered a spark of excitement amid a
year marked by sadness and dreary
Covid-19 angst.
“Every year whenever you see that they
start doing, like, the Pumpkin Spice Lattes
at Starbucks at the beginning of September,
it’s like, ‘Oh, they gotta wait till October,’ ” he
said. But this year the sight of “Spirit Hal-
loween stores opening up at the beginning
of September was just like: ‘All right, bring
it on, baby. Let’s get to spooky town.’ ”JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESClockwise from top: a creepy
clown at a Spirit Halloween
store in Easton, Md.; a store in
a shopping center in Dublin,
Calif.; and children’s costumes
on display at the store in
Rockville, Md.Halloween Pops Up
From 2020’s Ruins
By EZRA MARCUSWHAT TO WEAR, A
‘KAREN’ COSTUME
OR A HAZMAT
SUIT? ONE
RETAILER HAS
YOU COVERED.SAMUEL CORUM/ANADOLU AGENCY, VIA GETTY IMAGES SMITH COLLECTION/GADO, VIA GETTY IMAGES