There Are No Crazy Halloween Store Lines — Yet

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Happy Day-Before-Halloween! In a city of roughly 8.5 million people, there's a lot of demand for a good Halloween costume, but not always the time to buy it. So every year, New Yorkers line up to get into Halloween hotspots to grab what's left (hopefully at discounts). For all the last-minute goblins and ghouls out thre, we scoped out the situation at some Halloween stores this morning to help you avoid some frightful situations later on.

First up  is Halloween Adventure at 104 4th Avenue, the megastore that goes beyond your Pizza Rat costume dreams. For the unaware, it has an entrance on both 4th Avenue and Broadway. When we checked it out at 11 am, it already had a small line.

This time last year at Halloween Adventure, a line ran down the block to Grace Church, and wrapped around. We spoke to an employee who said "the line is going to get much longer around lunch time, and then pick up again once people start leaving work." If you're unprepared for tonight's Halloween Eve parties, you might want to find an excuse to clock out early.

Next up: The Ricky's Pop-Up at 155 Fifth Avenue. At 10:30, there was absolutely no line — yet. It's smarter to get in early before they start running out of sizes.

Just to be safe, we stopped by another Ricky's Halloween pop-up, located next door to the main Ricky's store at 7 East 14th Street. Lucky for you, there seems to be no mad costume scramble (yet!) but there will be a Samuel L. Jackson lookalike to greet you.

If you run out for a last-minute Halloween costume in the next 24 hours and encounter a line, give us a heads-up in the comments section below.