For the managers of this costume closeout and their masses of customers, it’s the Adar spirit with no window dressing

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

As costumes spill out of crates and bins and an anxious chorus of “Where’s the Queen Esther?” echoes through the racks and stacks, it might be pre-Purim pandemonium. But for the managers of this costume closeout and their masses of customers, it’s the Adar spirit with no window dressing

For the last 25 years, Lakewood shoppers know they can count on an all-in-one Purim pop-up shop as the easy answer for all Purim questions.

What’s it called? Where is it? Now, those questions are much harder to answer.

It will sell you all kinds of basket labels, but it’s kind of hard to put a label on.

It doesn’t really have a name; it’s been headquartered in nearly a dozen places around and across Lakewood. It doesn’t usually have any staff, and hardly a logo or sign. Like the original machatzis hashekel, you have to see it to understand.

IYKYK.

The Outfit Outlet

When I finally tracked down the store, I found it inhabiting an abandoned Walgreens on the border of Lakewood and Jackson. Its last location known to me was a shuttered Barnes and Noble (slain by the Amazon dragon). I lost the trail for a year or two at a former ShopRite or Stop and Shop.

The “space available” sign still adorns the storefront, but a small poster in the window, slightly askew in the spirit of Purim, quietly announces the presence of Costume Closeouts.

Entering the store, I’m relieved to leave the freezing post-Teves temps behind me and press my hands tightly around the steaming paper cup in my hand. Rabbi Yossi Hirschman, the store’s proprietor, immediately hails me with a cheery, “Wow, you brought me coffee!” His natural gregarious friendliness seems to go with the territory and defines much of the experience within.

The first thing that strikes me is a mannequin drying his hands on someone’s shirt. This, I will later learn, is ten-year-old Menachem Hirschman’s labor of love, painstakingly created to represent a famous Gemara at his class Eilu Metzios fair. Two additional mannequins in clown suits are looking on approvingly.

But a second look shows me the store doesn’t quite offer the urbexing adventure I’m expecting. It’s beautifully set up, arranged, and organized, with rack after rack of costumes, novelties, knickknacks, music, supplies, and shtick. Murals of catalog pages line the walls, and four shiny POS machines sit at the registers. Large boards are adorned with dozens and dozens of masks and wigs. There are clothing racks filled with every size kallah gown — from 2T and up — and others packed with soldiers, police, and one-piece rabbit suits.

This isn’t just a pop-up store… it’s more like a pop-up mall.

My eye falls on a rack stuffed with beketshes, tiny to tall, and I can’t stop myself. “I don’t need your beketshe,” I tell Yossi. “I’m here for an interview.”