If You Thought Borders Books' Transformation into Halloween Stores Was Sad, Wait Till You Hear This

Another piece of Americana has been eaten alive by cheap, Chinese-made costumes and phthalate-filled makeup.

Remember

from the Wall Street Journal, the one that proclaimed that the ghost of Borders Books was haunting Halloween? If you missed it, here's the gist: numerous Borders Books locations (which are now empty following the company's closure) throughout the country have been turned into outlets selling Halloween-related merchandise. Yesterday afternoon I discovered that one Halloween shop had taken over a place that was once a thriving pinnacle of interactive entertainment in Michigan: GameWorks. While arcades have been dead for a good 10 years, GameWorks stuck around until March of 2010. It was sad to see it fade away, and downright depressing to watch its empty building go untouched. But the saddest moment of all came when the large GameWorks logo was scraped off the building and replaced with a temporary sign for a cheesy Halloween shop. Granted, this was a more respectable transformation than the one that overtook the Metreon, Sony's

five-story arcade/entertainment complex in San Francisco. In the summer of 2009, the PlayStation-themed retail store on the first floor had been turned into a farmer's market. Upstairs, several arcade games sat untouched, while the movie theater received very little traffic during my visit. This has to make you wonder: what disappearing entity will Halloween shops and/or farmer's markets take over next? Considering the rise of Chipotle

and the fall of Baja Fresh, don't be surprised if the latter restaurant turns into something more ghoulish than spoiled guacamole.