How Spirit Halloween Transforms Strip Malls Into Vibrant Wonderlands
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2023
- Spirit Halloween comes in for a lot of criticism for leasing vacant and often distressed strip mall space for a few months, and then packing up shop on November 1, leaving a moribund shopping center no better off than it was before. But is there more to the story? And is the success of Spirit's business model a symptom of much deeper problems in the way we've planned and designed our cities?
Another installment of the Investigating Heinous Land Uses series!
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- All About Power Centers! • What Makes POWER CENTE...
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Resources:
- Rachel Quednau's piece at Strong Towns on Spirit Halloween and the failed suburban experiment: www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
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Images
- Sprit Halloween photos:
--- By JJBers from Willimantic, Connecticut, USA - Spirit Halloween (Dayville, Connecticut), CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
--- By Mike Mozart from Funny RUclips, USA - Spirit Halloween Shop 2016, Former Sports Authority, Farmington, CT Pics by Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on RUclips #Spirit #Halloween #2016, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
--- By Flickr user Scott Schrantz www.flickr.com/photos/scottsc... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
--- By Flickr user Brecht Bug, www.flickr.com/photos/9377957...
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
- Barclay Sq strip mall By Michael Rivera - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Superdry by Flickr User Choo Yut Shing: www.flickr.com/photos/2580286... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
- DFactory By Alexmaresgarcia - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Uniqlo Popup by Flickr User MTA www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphot... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
- Amazon trucks by Flickr User Todd Van Hoosear: www.flickr.com/photos/vanhoos... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
- Vampires By Terry Robinson - Oldschool Vampires, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Dr. Frankenstein by Flickr User Tim White: www.flickr.com/photos/timw1/4... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
- Zombies By Andrew Mercer (www.baldwhiteguy.co.nz) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Amazon van By Jay8g - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- UPS truck By Mr.choppers - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (RUclips music library)
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Trust me, the comments on this video are going to be terrible. EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE. The Nebula versions of these videos are all ad-free, and DON'T have sponsor promotions (including Nebula promos!). Discount for signing up using my custom link: go.nebula.tv/citynerd
Interesting video, also cool to learn your in Albuquerque. I’d love videos about NM. Beautiful state with many places to see, my most recent NM trip was to Carlsbad caverns. I’m considering relocating to NM mostly because the total state population is less then my county population in the DFW area.
Hey @CityNerd, you should do a video on the walkable environments of ski resorts!
@@SunnynPhilly
CITYNERD: .. Visit Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron.
For me the real story here is if your suburb has a Spirit Halloween AND is also building more retail strips then that should be a red flag for how your city is planned. In my town there are strip centers build more than 5 years ago that still have vacant spaces that were never filled.
Especially restaurant spaces. The only ones that can afford them are chains and most full-service chains aren't expanding.
Yep, my town is actually really good in no small part due to the population being middle class mostly, and yet there are about 4 abandoned places in highly visited highly trafficked areas and theyre building a new building.
I think also observing how they treat trees in their downtown says a lot, my town is nearly devoid of trees besides really shitty trees put in places that choke and cook them like parking lots and right next to roads in between the sidewalk and a parking lot, causing them to never grow well and stay stunted with lots of deadwood.
@@cherriberri8373 florida plants a lot of palms, but it's not really for the shade.
As long as the developers get paid.....ugh...
I feel this. We have a SH in my town (and many within an hour in all the little suburbs of our metro area) but our town is really making a plan for affordable housing and safe/equitable/affordable transportation.
I appreciate a channel that throws an occasional seasonal curveball.
I also appreciate a channel that throws an occasional seasonal curveball.
I too appreciate a channel that throws an occasional seasonal curveball.
Not the content we wanted, but definitely the content we needed.
Yeah, vaguely sarcastically droning about the occasional highlights (medium lights?) of car dependance is actually really refreshing. There are plenty of videos that are upfront about all the bad aspects of car culture. The way this video praises Spirit Holloween for standing out within the perpetually convinent but costly and soulless carscape is pure gold.
I read this in CityNerd's voice.
The Spirit Halloween near me operates out of a massive abandoned Kmart of which the Spirit Halloween only takes up a small corner, and the true spine-chilling horror of the season is to peek between the cracks of those temporary walls and see that you're surrounded by a vast, liminal warehouse that seems to stretch on forever. You look past the seasonal facade and witness a sea of white surfaces and harsh lighting that more than anything reminds you of how small we truly are, that every Spirit Halloween is contained within a larger host, on a larger earth, in a larger universe.
😳
The horror …
Yeah, I did enough reading up on this to realize that they're more than wiling to lease a huge space and just utilize a small part of it if the price is right. Shows you how impossible it is to actually fill old K-Marts!
@@CityNerd The best thing about the abandoned Kmart in question is it was the centerpiece of a big power center that also has an abandoned movie theater, meaning the two largest-capacity buildings are vacant, meaning somewhere in the realm of 3,000 parking spots are dedicated to a Dollar Tree and a couple other low capacity buildings. And when a new grocery store opened, I guess it was more financially viable to build a new disconnected store 300 ft to the east instead of taking up any of the vacant space and pave another 500 parking spots instead of forcing people to park in an adjacent lot, god forbid.
At least they have all that parking for when people come far and wide to see the great (also relatively low capacity) Spirit Halloween.
@@CityNerd they actually managed to do so in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, it's mostly Burlington Coat Factory and I really can't stand that store.
Never thought I’d see Spirit Halloween on an urbanism channel
It was inevitable…much like a zombie apocalypse…
bruh@@rachel_sj
Why not? They pop up everywhere 😂
I thought it was just a thumbnail to get attention but it turned out to be very good analysis
It's saving the global economy. Atleast that's what its theme song said
Still waiting for Spirit Halloween to release their new "Sexy Male Urbanist" costume...
The "Sexy Patrick Star" references the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie from 2004 where Patrick is dressed up that way during the Goofy Goober Rock segment. The moment a big chain like Circuit City or Borders announces they're closing all stores, Spirit swoops in with a Beetlejuice voice and says *"It's showtime".* It's nice to see a video on Spirit Halloween from an urbanist perspective! Here's the history behind Spirit: Spirit Halloween was founded in 1983 by Joseph Marver as a pop-up store in the Castro Valley Mall in San Francisco. Before Spirit became one of the most popular destinations for Halloween costumes and decor, the company got its start as a women's clothing store called Spirit Women's Discount Apparel.
As sales at his apparel store started to plummet, Marver was inspired to transition to the Halloween business after watching throngs of customers line up to visit a costume shop across the street from his store. When the costume shop moved to a new location, Marver put his dresses in storage, loaded his own store with Halloween stuff and slapped a sign on the old costume shop. That proved to be a genius idea as it was the best October he ever had. Then he did it again the year after with a temporary space in a nearby mall and sold 100K worth of merchandise in 30 days! In 1999, Spencer Gifts officially acquired Spirit Halloween. With the help of Spencer, Spirit became known for its tongue-in-cheek pop culture costumes
It's like a suburban mushroom. It feeds upon the death of others, but in the end it makes the pizza of our community that much better.
I don't know about better, but this is still an amusing comment...
A Chinese food place next to a Spirit is either going to be the best or worst Chinese food you have ever had.
@@Bacopa68 Nope. Replace "Spirit" with "pet store or veterinary clinic."
@@colormedubious4747 You basically just said the same thing to replace it with, just at an earlier date. Before they went out of buisness.. haha
@@cherriberri8373 You basically completely missed the joke. I'll explain it because explaining a joke ALWAYS makes it better: The restaurant is cooking and serving pets. Haha.
Your closing thought was spot on. It’s so disheartening to see metro areas keep gobbling up these wide expanses of empty spaces along the exurbs to build more unnecessary strip malls and outlet centers, while leaving the ones that were built just ten years ago behind to die and deteriorate. A few years from now the new centers will start to age and a whole new crop will go up a few miles down the stroad.
Our cities are becoming wastelands of deserted strip malls and industrial areas that should be reclaimed and built up into healthy communities. It’s just not sustainable and is destroying the landscape.
But alas, there is a segment of the population that thinks it has a God given right to wipe out prairies and cornfields to live in a shiny new house in a shiny new subdivision right next to a cornfield, and a shiny new strip mall.
The problem is it's cheaper to build out sprawl. No one wants to build more housing somewhere where real estate already exists because a) it's expensive and b) a shortage of real estate is a benefit to anyone who already owns land there because they are sitting on a more valuable asset.
Hold on. Industrial areas are also an important part of our communities. We need good access to those areas. Those neighbourhoods need good access to freight services, and we need to live near them. I don't want industry next door to me, but a few blocks away is fine.
On an unrelated note, having a lot of empty space in the "correct" spaces of an industrial area makes sense to me, because people are able to repurpose those area for diverse activities.
@@eugenetswong Yes. I was referring to abandoned and unused industrial spaces inside the metro area that are just a waste of space. It would be nice to see companies repurpose them and bring workers and the business they bring back to an urban area, instead of constructing sprawling campuses on the outskirts.
@@Earth1218I think that some lots might be useful for temporary storage, and/or even transloading. Have you heard of transloading before?
This may have started as a suburban strip mall phenomenon but I've seen them in old chain pharmacy spaces in NYC -which mostly says how much the chains over-saturated the City.
I disagree. I get the impression that NYC is losing tenants, so naturally any empty space is a home to Spirit Halloween. Those stores should normally still be there. NYC's phenomenon has nothing to with physical design like strip malls. It's all to do with politics.
I want to absolutely emphasize that I'm just speaking based on what I heard about politics.
@@eugenetswong I would think that New York City losing retail tenants is a symptom of how extensively the chains have oversaturated the city.
@@edwardmiessner6502I'm under the impression that those retailers leaving have nothing to do with urbanism or lack thereof. I say this, because I expect most NYC shops to be in pedestrian friendly shops. those shops should be easy to redesign/customize for tenants.
For former Walmarts, Kmarts, and anchor stores, it's such a big and awkward space. If the store has 3 large entrances, and can be divided among 3 tenants, then how does that work out? I think that 1 or 2 stores will have less visibility, and therefore be less exciting to tenants.
With downtown pedestrian friendly stores, there is plenty of foot traffic, so all store fronts have reasonably good visibility.
Theft and lack of policing have more to do with NYC. In major cities, it seems that thugs are stealing goods in such large quantities and competing in sales just a few doors down.
That being said, I'm not an expert. I'm just trying to piece together political news.
Ony of my favorite fun facts is that Spirit Halloween is the main revenue driver for it's parent company, Spencer's Gifts (that store in the mall with a bunch of pop culture and sex-things). Spirit Halloween brings in a stupid amount of money in only three months each year (the vast majority of that being October). Without it, Spencer's would likely go under.
Source: I worked at a Spirit Halloween for five seasons, with one of them being store manager.
Possibly the best seasonal side hustle. Too much fun to be had in a busy Spirit Halloween in a college town.
Would it be a bother to ask you lots of questions on how the business is run? I'd like to figure out how the popup shop system works.
@@eugenetswong 1. Find a cheap lot
2. Put up cheap colorful signage
3. Fill it with cheaply produced overpriced seasonal goods
4. Underpants gnomes
5. Profit
4th of July is a similarly lucrative time for firework companies, though I'm not sure if there's a dominant company. I don't have a ton of experience with this, but my friend was the swim coach at the local high school and I helped her sell fireworks the weekend before the 4th. We made $15,000 _profit_ in 2 days and funded her entire year of swimming. Apparently she did this every year, as she just kept all the leftover fireworks in her garage and trotted them out the next year.
The dry sarcasm in this video is wonderful
At this point with CityNerd, I have lost all sense of whether a video is sarcastic or wholehearted. I love it.
Will there be a Sexy CityNerd Halloween outfit cosplay for us Patreon supporters?
Yeah, I can't tell. I get that we want to make fun of the horrible big box development, but even in the future urbanist utopia I still demand my annual visits (yes, multiple... this is also my go-to home decor store) to Spirit Halloween. Halloween popups (both for shopping and drinking) are the highlight of my year.
I feel the same about his humour. I expected a video about the positives of this, until he started describing the right turn lane, and mentioning the "art installation".
I personally hate that they sell things that waste our money, but I appreciate that popup shops at least put those areas to use.
@@gandalfbmgAre you saying that there are Halloween popup shops that sell food and beverage?
No drinking and spirit but there are a lot of pop up Halloween bars around me.
And cheesy cheap Halloween decor is never a waste of money.
“Sexy corrupt police, sexy people who have been incarcerated by said corrupt police” is the greatest single line in RUclips history
Anytime I see an abandoned store like that I see it become a church or a spirit Halloween. What a great episode, as per usual.
agreed
Strip malls are such a strange concept. They're literally in every part of the US, and they can be in any sized town from the smallest village of a couple hundred or less to a huge city of millions and they can be put anywhere. If there's a blank strip of land along a highway, it can be a strip mall. They even vary in size from a small one with maybe just two storefronts, to large ones with multiple anchor stores and smaller stores peppered in between. I think that's why they're so popular to build, they can go anywhere, vary in size, and at least at first the owner is guaranteed to get tenants. But I think similarly to the shopping malls, if a glitzy new strip mall opens up, suddenly the other one doesn't seem so nice anymore. People stop coming little by little, a store goes out of business and leaves, and then another, the building falls into disrepair or looks dated over the years, and rinse and repeat.
The problem is that they can't actually "be put anywhere." It just *seems* that way because the necessary preconditions are simply assumed and seemingly invisible to almost everyone due to that. Namely, they require large plots of undeveloped land which nonetheless have convenient access to high-speed roads, municipal water, and sewers. If we stop overbuilding these (specific types of) infrastructure obligations, we'll stop seeing these low-value investments.*
These are the more direct requirements of such establishments. They also require lots of more indirect things, like large numbers of customers who can and/or must drive to access basic shopping needs. These establishments are outright hostile to non-driving customers. The real reason that these locations have suffered in the Amazon age is that their usual customers suddenly have access to a shopping alternative that doesn't require driving, despite their living environment not providing any of the traditional alternatives.
* -- Companies like Wal-Mart have been quite open about how little they actually spend on structures like these and how short their expected useful life is. This isn't really for the sake of any high-minded principle like transparency, but for the very self-interested purpose of reducing their tax burdens, via lowered property tax valuations and increased depreciation.
I love that this channel will devote 10 minutes of sarcasm just to the well deserved store of Spirit Halloween! Since you are in Albuquerque, I expect that we will see a video about "Vision Zero" which must absolutely should include clips of angry entitled motorists driving in the bike lanes.
City nerd! I would love to see a top ten video of things to advocate at city council meetings that can improve public transit, pedestrian infrastructure and cycling infrastructure
I'm no expert, but I think that we can advocate for better connections to-from strong neighbourhoods.
Have you heard of Jarrett Walker?
Topic suggestion: In a post-Amazon/online shopping and post-COVID world, what SHOULD we be doing will all this retail/commercial space. Obviously converting it into much needed affordable housing would be great, but we can't eliminate all real retail stores and offices. What should future downtowns look like? Are we destined to have cities full of coffee shops, restaurants, barbers and thrift stores (or maybe those are also doomed)? The town I lived in for 8 years in the UK is basically becoming this now. A lot of interesting stores have moved out and we now have an abundance of what we call "charity shops", hair dressers, estate agents and coffee shops. There's very few clothing shops left or much else interesting. There are a lot of vacant units and many shop owners complaining of landlords keeping rents high, meanwhile their units sit empty for months or years.
you can still have a big retail store in downtowns. Vancouver even has a Costco in it's downtown, i believe it's attached to one of the arenas and has zero surface parking.
Are you from Stoke or the Midlands by any chance? We have a ubiquitously grim city around here.
Bascially charities,kebabs and Kurds barber shops
@@Leonardo-ik9fx No. I'm from Surrey believe it or not! I'd say it's actually just grim everywhere at the moment.
Maybe the solution is to help people learn how to setup cheap popup shops to test the market for new businesses.
Also, building multipurpose buildings is something worth considering.
I've seen a hardware store turned into a call centre plus other businesses, and I've also seen that call centre turned into a church.
There are options for recovery, but we just need to be willing to lower the costs of experimentation.
@@Ryan-093I've been in this Costco, but I have not seen any attachment to the stadium/arena. It's easy to walk back and forth to both places, though.
"A one of a kind public art installation at no cost to the taxpayer" (04:17) LOL! Priceless. 🙏
Glad to see that you moved to ABQ! Welcome to the Land of Enchantment! You forgot to mentioned how Spirit has resurrected my childhood by putting their west side store in the old Toys R Us on Alameda. Let's hope they approve the United stadium lease at Balloon Fiesta Park. It could be one of the best stories about a completely privately funded stadium intelligently using an under utilized public space (for 50/52 weeks per year that is) that already has most infrastructure in place to support it. Fingers crossed!
the sarcasm is so heavy on this. can't get enough
I heard the Nordstrom was leaving that fancy shopping mall by the Powell Street cable car turnaround in SF and my first thought was that "three stories of Spirit Halloween in downtown SF would be awesome"
Last year the Spirit Halloween was at Potrero Center. This year the closest one is in Westlake. Proof that the SF doom loop is greatly exaggerated ;)
Never in a million years did I think a video about Spirit Halloween would be this great, yet here we are. Keep up the good work, sir!
In an empty strip mall near me Spirit Halloween opened in August. Roughly the same time Costco stocked for Christmas.
My goodness, I never realized this until you mentioned it. The costume store wears a costume, and its scarier than any halloween costume ive seen before… its the remains of a failed suburban big box store.
Video idea - have you wondered about the predatory practices of low cost furniture and mattress stores that always seem to be having “Going Out of Business” sales? They are attacking many inner ring suburban neighborhoods and putting unsuspecting residents there in poverty on bad furniture loans and other debt
How is that the retailer's fault? You cannot force people to buy. NOT buying things you can't afford on credit (or otherwise) is super-easy, barely an inconvenience!
In this case it seems that the going out of business was for real.
@@colormedubious4747 Easy to say these things without insight on the living conditions that drives these kinds of purchases. Predatory marketing tactics are designed around preying on less informed consumers and borderline deceiving them into making a financial commitment they may not be able to handle. Saying "not buying things you cant afford is easy!" is very telling of your scope regarding these practices.
@@colormedubious4747Wow...wow wow wow wow wow.
I just want to add that you can't force people to buy, but you can still be predatory and give them bad loans.
@@eugenetswong Wow wow wow wow wow... wow. You just contradicted yourself. You agree that you can't force people to buy the product, but you can somehow force them to accept a predatory loan. How does THAT work? Either you can't force them to do either of those things, or you can. Spoiler: You cannot. People must assume responsibility for their bad decisions. "They bought the tickets. I say let 'em crash!"
I watched this on nebula, but I came here because I wanted to comment on your cool polo. The Albuquerque Isotopes have an awesome Copa de la Diversion logo.
I live in Ireland, where halloween is from and we don't have spirit halloween. Everyone loves halloween here and it's a massive deal, but halloween stuff is sold in shops that are always around mainly euro shops and home improvement shops. I'd really like to go to a spirit halloween though
True, never thought of ABQ as an urbanist paradise -- kind of dusty, run down, and car-centric. BUT -- I love that you live there! Amazingly good weather and outdoor pursuits in one of the most culturally unique parts of the country. The Halloween retail topic is fascinating. Thank you.
Funnily, both times I visted 'Burque, I didn't use a car at all. The old town area, particularly, seemed pretty walkable to me, and the bus system was good. But my standards are pretty low, coming from Arkansas.
Aren't they trying to redevelop Central Avenue (the former US-66 main east-west street/stroad across the city) to be more urbanist-leaning? Though I hear the results are something akin to "congestive heart failure."
I think you’re really overlooking the local family owned restaurant as the best component of the modern strip mall
I did touch on that in...I think my video on fast food drive throughs? It's almost cliche that the best food value in any city is in locally-owned strip mall restaurants, usually immigrant-owned. But it's cliche because it's pretty much true.
Seriously, 9/10 of these restaurants are usually immigrant run. It is wild to think suburbs(and their strip malls) were once excluded from the immigrant experience; but are now the backbone of their communities in many metro areas.
@@CityNerd Speaking of immigrants owned restaurants, my partner and I once had a very good lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in a suburban strip mall within the city limits of Hartford, Connecticut.
My personal favourite is the local independent sports bars that end up in underutilized strip mall space on the edge of suburban neighbourhoods. I have to assume these things eek out a living solely based on a desperate need for a third place that you can stumble home from drunk to your suburban home.
One of my favorite things to do is drive from 1 store to the next store and look for a close spot, all while never leaving that parking lot. Really makes my heart beat
I can't believe that you actually referenced Halloween 3 Season of the Witch 😅
Also, despite being a born and raised Canadian (boring ol' Winnipeg), from 18-23 I lived in Albuquerque as well as Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and ah, October Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, I constantly miss it. The collection of the sunrise, that watermelon pink on covering the mountains, and a slew of hundreds of balloons ascending into the sky. I had a 45-60 minute drive from Albuquerque to Rio Rancho at one point, and it was almost perfectly timed with the sunrise and lift off. It was gorgeous, that plus the right music, that was a good way to start the day. I miss New Mexico constantly. It also has a great climate without getting Arizona stupidly hot. I miss the climate, I miss the style of homes, the colours of the Sandy yellows, the oranges, and browns. I was out there until 2009, so the transit was absolutely a non-existent system. Rio Rancho did have a free to use, city-wide WiFi network invested and funded by Intel though, which I wish we had something like that here since Canada is known for having the worst cellular data packages internationally. I don't know if Intel still manages it or if the concept has long since been abandoned.
4:19 This and your commentary made me whoop in laughter. Never change your sense of ironic humor. Well done.
Bizarre economics of stores that exist for one month a year. Spirit Halloween. Christmas candy...
In my city condo developers buy entire blocks and kick out the businesses, but they then sit empty for up to a decade. Thankfully they allow Spirit Halloween to temporarily move in each Fall, animating dead spots of the street.
6:40 Yes! I was at the Tysons Corner, VA mall this past weekend and saw that Spirit had taken over the huge, vacant Lord & Taylor space. Just wild to me, but honestly better than seeing the corpse of L&T, America’s oldest department store chain. Tysons Corner Center is actually the mall where Apple opened their first ever store (3 hours earlier than the Glendale, CA store due to the time zone difference).
My costume this year is a (normal- not sexy) Amtrak conductor who gives out free tickets on fictional routes/schedules that *should* exist for my city. It’s already won one friend group contest 🤷🏼♂️
That is an actual cool costume idea, because it is a friendly advocacy method. As long as you don't come across as judgemental to any group, then you could get a lot of open ears!
Classic CityNerd. Love it.
Sometimes I go to Livingston Mall, a dying mall in Livingston, NJ, and not even Spirit Halloween wants to lease space in that mall which should be demolished and redeveloped at this point, yet Livingston’s always had a history of having no rail access and developed into a car centric suburb in the 1920s so it’ll probably be car dependent condos or NJ’s first “lifestyle center” with a fake Main Street.
On the flip side, there’s a costume shop in Manhattan that’s open year round and is accessible by walking, bus, bike, and subway.
I hate to say, but there is already a "lifestyle center" in Flemington, New Jersey right by where the Lowe's is on Route 31 South (and it's been there for quite some time already, around 5-10 years), so maybe Livingston will have NJ's second lifestyle center.
Not that this is a race any town should be striving to win, anyways.
@@simonribeiro7630 I looked at the so-called “lifestyle center“ in Flemington and I’ve seen better on Google maps. The only advantage of a Livingston lifestyle center is that a dedicated transit hub would be built since a bus to NYC and some routes to Morristown & Newark stop at the current mall property, but I expect to have a park & ride plus space for Rideshare/Taxi/Paratransit pickups and drop offs since it’s Livingston.
I hope to see some content about ABQ in the near future! I absolutely love that you visit a lot of cities that are not famous for having good urbanism, and that it feels like you really care about just seeing what any given city is doing right. The southwest especially has some interesting challenges with regard to managing the weather when creating walkable/bikeable streets.
I'd also love to hear you continue your train of thought from this video and discuss some good options for retrofitting strip malls with something better. Coming up with ways to "recycle" suburban infrastructure is one of the most important things we can do to make our cities better in my opinion.
But many Americans like things the way they are--stroads, strip malls, and cars everywhere. After all, Emma Lazarus called us the "wretched refuse."
I was going to drop a long comment about how Spirit Halloween demonstrates how strip malls themselves are the problem, then you drop this true Pulitzer-worthy work of art.
the fact that I checked the date on my phone to make sure it's not April Fool's day 😅
That was my first thought, "What is this, April Fools?"
I was so lost until you started talking about the paradigm shifting signage. 😂
Since you're in Albuquerque it'd be cool to see your take on the New Mexico United stadium proposed site at Balloon Fiesta park and maybe taking a look at how that could affect the area vs other places in the city.
It's funny, usually when a channel runs its Patreon roll at the end, I disengage and move on to the next video. But since you started putting your cat in the Patreon outro, I keep watching until the end. Engagement!
Unusually positive CityNerd video and I definitely enjoyed it
7:19 Spirit Halloween: Giving New Meaning to “Strip” Malls
I can't tell if this video is sarcastic or completely serious. 100% CityNerd love it
Black cat at the end of a Halloween video = perfection. (Mind you, I'd say black cat at the end of any video, or to greet me when I come home = perfection as well, so... :D)
There's a petition specifically for* a black cat video elsewhere in the comments.
*My phone typed "fur" here and I almost left it in, it was so on-point.
I love the last 10 seconds of cat footage trend, please don’t ever, ever stop.
2:10 “get over yourself” 🤣 love you
This ought to be one of your funniest videos at the moment. Even some of the most urbanist places in this country are prone to Spirit Halloweens. I was in one last year on State Street in the Chicago Loop.
wow you're already at 200k subscribers! I've been loving your videos for the past year, glad to see your work is being appreciated
🎅🏻I think Ray is growing a beard to work as Santa Clause at a seasonal Christmas store in a strip mall. It is a subtle cue for you to sign up for Nebula.
As soon as I read your comment, I pictured Ray not even trying to be jolly or use a Santa's voice. His dry humour making fun of well behaved children would be appalling to parents but be hilarious to us. 😀
@@eugenetswong My impression is that it’s the “adults” that bring out his sarcasm the most.
@@barryrobbins7694hahahaha
Vermont is (in)famous for its' tight development regulation ("not a good place to do business...") but the fact the Burlington area has *TWO (2)* Spirit Halloweens this year - one in the former Sears in the University Mall in South Burlington and one in the former Bed Bath & Beyond in Williston - says otherwise.
You probably already know this. But on the bright side neighborhoods with a large Halloween trick or treat contingent are an excellent marker for if a neighborhood is walkable and liveable.
Every time I hear a friend or colleague say “we didn’t get any trick or treaters” i think “well duh you live in a suburban hellhole with no sidewalks, your house frontage is 90% garage, and you got to cross a massive 50mph 7 lane stroad to get there.
Or if you want a really sad / snarky video idea: the rise of “trunk or treat”. Parents park in some random parking lot in a line and hand out candy from their car trunk. It’s sold as a “safe” way to trick or treat. Plus you don’t have to…. Gasp…. Walk!
This is so often true. It is also an indicator of community.
Contingent = a group of tiny (and not so tiny) sugar fiends
My kid's elementary school had been doing an after-hours trick or treat as a safe place to go trick or treating (since a lot of the area is suburb with little to no sidewalks) and I loved the idea as a way to make schools more of a local gathering place than a daycare to shove kids into and sit empty 75% of the time. But this year they got rid of it to do a trunk or treat and it's incredibly depressing.
Or just the decline of neighbourhoods as boomers are holding on to their empty nests and fighting any infill or slightly higher density development, while prices have increased so much that young families can't afford to move into the larger older homes.
Halloween stopped being fun for homeowners when interlopers from other areas began invading their neighborhoods and it stopped being a community event. Most were fine, albeit numerous, but then there were shady adults and older teens who committed vandalism or suspiciously eyed past the homeowner in the doorway as if casing the house for potential burglary. That's what killed it in the neighborhoods I lived in.
An apartment building was built in the parking lot of a local strip mall in Scottsdale in lieu of building more stores. The residents can even walk to fast food restaurants and to buy groceries at the Walmart. Some might even work in some of the stores or nearby offices. Might this become a trend?
I was just thinking about this concept. Like why not take the old stores and convert them to apartments or something? The parking is already there and people could walk to the other stores easily.
@@starzzzy22What's next then? Are you going to suggest transit lines so that these people can access their jobs downtown without a car? Shameless! /s
I think that it might become a trend. At the strip mall that I usually go to for groceries, I see that they could build a big dormitory or apartment building with ground level shops. This would make the place more pedestrian friendly. I just don't know how to push for this.
@@starzzzy22I don't think that the old stores need converting. Reduce parking minimums, and build apartment buildings with ground level shops adjacent to the walkways. This would use up some unused parking spaces to create a pedestrian friendly area, and encourage businesses to move into the shops that you have in mind.
@@eugenetswong Pretty sure it would be a business decision by the mall owner, most of whom are struggling now. The main thing we can do is ask our local governments to remove any zoning restrictions against doing this.
5:09 bike parking! Quite the urbanist strip mall
At least strip malls were hastily built from cheap materials so they are easy to knock down and tear out.
it would be interesting to turn strip malls and other malls into dense urban villages, then connect those urban villages with frequent transit connections to other urban villages in the area. I've seen this approach mentioned for north america since we are stuck with so much suburan infrastructure that we have to contend with.
@@Ryan-093 I also think about this retrofitting problem. Just like the office-to-residence conversion proposals, I think strip-mall locations may be difficult to transform into what we need. Maybe that's a lack of imagination on my part. I would like to see some case studies for what has worked and hasn't worked for strip-mall retrofits.
Thanks for the video Ray!!! Much love from Miami!!!
The high level of deep dry sarcasm was strong in those one. Right on.
Your commentary is both spot-on and pure sarcastic comedy gold.
Hell yeah ABQ! CityNerd Meetup - Buerqueno edition!!
Oh, 200K! Congratulations!
I go to that food truck at 5:06 every Tuesday. They got the cheapest tacos in Abq and it’s right next to my work! 😅
Great seasonal installment! 🎃
You and Breaking bad make me drool for some Albuquerque with your footage.
Hey I'm the nut who's read nearly all of the comments while procrastinating. With so many mentions of ABQ, why is this the first to mention Breaking Bad? Is it an embarrassing reference for Albuquerquians(?)? I mean it's no massive balloon festival, but it was a good show, right?
I am a member of an O-scale model railroad club. The club was fortunate to obtain a large vacant store in a pretty large strip mall. This happened at the beginning of Covid when nobody was going out and the existing businesses went belly up. The club put up 3 layouts and hosted many open houses. The mall owner loved us because the open houses drew people to the mall. However, we are now being kicked out as there is a business that needs the space and is willing to pay for it. Your video gives me hope that we can find another location with reasonably cheap rent.
I absolutely love your dry sarcastic sense of humor.
citynerd appreciating street malls. it really is spooky season
That's Halloween 3 reference made my day! Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Happy Happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!
A City Nerd Halloween video? Yes please! 🎃👻😈
This time of year is like a human mating season for many parts of the world that get cold, and it has me coming back around the the major problem in our cities and towns of there not being enough 3rd places as a result of car oriented development and the suburbs. Induced demand works in every direction, and upon rebuilding transit systems and regulating cars, there is a natural flow of induced demand that occurs in the local neighborhoods and urban areas. this allows for market space for increase micro economies, and ultimately an induced demand of social interaction. If we think about College campuses, the reason most people enjoy their social time in college isn't because their young, its because campuses provide the induced social interaction, creating social friction and "warming" the area so to speak. Lectures, presentations, fairs, social groups, education, art, the list goes on forever. on college campuses it often felt like you had to try to be a recluse to avoid activates and engagement. But here in Everytown, Everycity, USA ....loneliness is the default.
As a Burqueña abroad (Japan) it always throws me for a loop when I remember you're in ABQ. Northeast Heights represent.
'Just got back from Houston Texas... and *chuckles* do i have a video for you *GRINN*' 👀
🤣🤣🤣
oh dear lord... oh Houston...
Thanks for the video! I always enjoy your content. Your comparison of costume options for men and women made me laugh
I recently took a hot air balloon in Santa Fe. It's a surprisingly chill way to travel, as long as you don't really care where you're going.
You're unhinged for this one, Ray
Yay! Black cat outro is especially appropriate for this video.
This made my day. Thank you. Long live the Sprit of Halloween.
"Nobody wants to be Fred" killed me
Also I agree, guys should have himbo costume options too.
I know I’ve been watching too many urban planning videos around my GF when she goes on vacation and during her layover in LA she expressed frustration over how “stroads are everywhere”
I’m sorry baby 😂😂😂
Uncle Nicks's Costume Warehouse will forever be the original Spirit Halloween
How would we effectively and incrementally retrofit an urban landscape of a stroad lined with strip malls?
turm them into "urban villages"
Enjoyed this video so much more than I thought I would. Lols
These are the issues we need to be talking about.
Ah yes, the four seasons of Albuquerque: cold, windy, hot, and Balloon Fiesta. Sometimes even all occurring in the same day!
Opening screen embodies the US dystopia perfectly. Guns & Dollar loans, classic Muricka, translation: FreeDumb! + my pickup.
Nice T-shirt! Heading down to this years el Día de los Muertos? Happening soon.
Your video style is most fetching, best RUclips formula for this content this year, IMO, even as Google tries to morph RUclips into some kind of entertaining series of legacy cable tv ads. Yep, they are trying.
One reason retail is in trouble is it is labor intensive, and labor is artificially expensive in the US due to high labor costs like healthcare. Retail crime seems to be a problem now too. The dead mall problem is also a problem in high density areas like New York City, where street level retail has many vacancies.
Berkshire Hathaway operates a commercial real estate brokerage, that sells but does not own any given property. .
Not just healthcare, real estate costs are out of control. You have to at least pay enough for employees to be within a reasonable commuting distance.
I know, all those carbon based life forms make business so expensive.😀
This one was fun, thank you!
The food is reason enough to live in Albuquerque.
this is an interesting perspective on Spirit Halloween and strip mall vacancies. good job
Your costume bit of the video was hilarious 😂
Great Halloween episode
What a beautiful episode 😂
I know exactly where my nearest Spirit Halloween is. It's a store I'm grateful for, mostly because they have a solid business model and know when to get some property.
4:20 this glorious piece of modern abstract art follows in the abstract minimalism of great artists like Marcel Duchamp and his famous Urinal.
Greetings from the city that previously held the world record for mass hot air balloon ascents. :)
I must admit, your delivery has reached a point where I actually wasn't sure what was sarcasm and what was serious...