|
The news
told stories of people camping out for Black Friday at 8am the
day before. Granted, there are a lot of us that appreciate any excuse
to avoid Thanksgiving with the family, but the line has to be drawn
somewhere. Take me, for example: I could not find a single deal in the
huge stack of day-after-Thanksgiving sales ads great enough to entice
me into waking up in time to storm the beaches at 5am, especially not
after a Thanksgiving rife with dark meat and margaritas. Still, I have
to admit that I still harbored a certain perverse curiosity about what
the crowds might look like at some of the more popular retail outlets
in the area, so I went out to take a look at the aftermath of the
early sales at around 11am.
My first stop was the local Best Buy here in Los Angeles. You may remember this as being
the same Best Buy from which I attempted to
procure a PS3 about a week ago. I
figured that the huge press of shoppers combined with the slipshod
organization of this particular Best Buy would mean pure chaos all
day. To my surprise, it was only a little crowded, and things were
running fairly smoothly. What's more, I was able to score about couple
of marked-down PC games that I was so sure they'd be out of on account
of the early store hours. Quite the contrary, the fact that the games
were mixed up on the shelf and in no particular order meant that no
one could find them (not even the employees!) except for Yours Truly.
Sure, I couldn't sell the games online for thousands of dollars more
than they're actually worth, but you have to pick your battles,
people.
Circuit City, on the other hand, was a bit less rewarding. You'd think
that it was just another ordinary day of shopping from the looks of
the place. Of course, it could have been that the crowds had simply
swooped in like vultures at the crack of dawn and picked every meaty
sale item from the rotting corpse that, in this case, was the store
itself, and the parking lot was a cactus/Joshua tree that the vultures
had been waiting on, but I think a much more likely explanation is
that the store had been hamstrung once again by the retailer's nasty
habit of advertising items that their stores don't carry. It's either
a case of negligence in the shipping department, or else Circuit City
is trying to cut into their competitors' profit margins by getting
them to price match stuff they wouldn't normally put on sale.
Carelessness, or genius-ness? You decide.
Things really picked up when I got to the mall. The completely packed
parking lot was a good indication that Black Friday was still in full
effect, but I wanted to get a look inside to see if society had
completely broken down, and who knows, perhaps riots and trampling,
even...
Unfortunately, no. Oh well, there's always next year. It was still
fairly crowded inside the mall, but the biggest crowds were gathered
at the food court. It was about lunch time, but unfortunately for
those folks, Sbarro wasn't offering any Black Friday specials, like
"buy one triangular piece of cardboard with 'cheese' and get one
free!" but I'm kind of getting off track here. Things were different
over at Old Navy. Their huge windows let you see that they had lines
going up and down the aisles. Who knew that pastel shirts and
distressed jeans could create such fervor? I wanted to get a snapshot
of the affair, but a couple of harried-looking employees rushed over
to the window and started waving their hands at me as though they were
trying to signal a passing plane. Those poor bastards, I thought. They
don't tell you about days like this when you sign up for "seasonal
employment opportunities."
That was as much as I could take of Black Friday. Hats off to those of
you who made the extra effort to get up in the morning to go shopping,
I guess. It's a little too stressful for me, and indeed, the hustle
and bustle of the day wore on a number of people working at the mall,
including the man of the hour:
It's not worth it, Santa! Just put him on the "naughty" list!
And I now cut to -RoG-
who also dared to venture out into the Black Friday abyss on the other
side of town (in Burbank)...
What was that you just
said about cutting to me? Keep your damned knives away from me and
leave them embedded in your womb where they belong, Dr. Boogie.
Anyway, yeah, I too experienced the pain joy of
shopping on the busiest retail day of the year. Granted, I'm not
really one to shop in stores for people anymore when I can do it with
the click of a mouse from home and not have to get stuck in a line
behind some mother who's trying to prevent her child from spitting up all over her
shoulder while simultaneously attempting to hoist a jumbo pack of
diapers up onto the checkout counter. Yeah, those experiences I can do
without.
Still, I decided to
venture out today with no real intention of shopping, but instead, to
observe the holiday madness as people vied for the best deals. So
here's a few pics and recollections from my morning/afternoon amidst
the shopping anarchy.
Burbank has a big
outdoor strip mall area which has some fast food joints, a Target, a
Best Buy and some other big name shops. While it has much less cramped
parking than your average shopping mall, the lot was still filled up
completely. It also took us 15 minutes more than it normally would
have just to get to the
parking lot.
Sure it's not fun when
you're the one hunting for parking, but once you finally do find a
spot, the real fun begins. Some of you might normally be tempted to
head straight into the stores, but I suggest hanging around the
parking lot for a bit. Sooner or later, two people are going to see an
open spot at the same time and then they'll both speed towards it. One
person will get it while the other person screeches on their brakes
and then proceeds to lay on their horn for a good 30 seconds while
giving the stare. Now, when combined with a blaring car horn,
the stare is an effective tool in letting the other person know a)
that was your spot and not theirs, b) you hope they burn
in hell, c) you are a tool, and sometimes d) all of the
above.
Honestly, you might be
better off just bringing a lawn-chair and sitting in the parking lot
all day to watch the hilarity of parking battles ensue before your
eyes. But fine, some of you want to actually go IN the stores... no
problemo. I've got ya covered.
Ah yes, the dreaded
empty bottom shelf. The bane of every hardcore gamer's and parent's
existence alike this holiday season. Not a single Nintendo Wii or PS3
system in sight, just the new games you wish you could play. Hang
around this area long enough and you'll see plenty of excited kids
destroy the worlds of their parents. "OH MY GOD! THE NINTENDO Wii!
MOMMY! DADDY! I WANT THAT FOR CHRISTMAS!" And all the parents can
do is force out a smile, knowing that there's no way in hell they're
gonna be able to get that system for their kids without either killing
somebody for it or paying 5 times as much for it on eBay. Or possibly
both.
Not everything was so
hopeless though. Target actually had some damned good deals on brand
new DVDs. You could get a variety of fairly new releases, including
"Charlie and the Chocolate factory" and "Batman Begins", for only
$3.98. The only question is, was saving 5 bux worth going through
traffic and waiting in immense store lines? Well, I suppose if you
have a really big family and were buying these things in bulk for
everybody the savings would be worth it. Otherwise, I'd have to say,
no... probably not.
Best Buy was an absolute
madhouse. I don't even know where the lines began, as they appeared to
wrap around the entire friggin' store. I felt like I needed a machete
to hack my way through the thick crowds o' people, just to get up
close to some actual products. A lot of the good stuff was already
sold out, but there were still plenty of CDs and DVDs on sale. Their
prices weren't as low as Target, but they had better selection. Still,
it'll be a cold day in hell before I wait two hours in line to buy a
copy of "The Santa Clause" for 5 bux.
The final stop was a
place called Linens 'n Things. Granted, I had never been in one of
these before, but the place seemed like your typical Bed Bath & Beyond
store. It was fairly crowded in there, but nowhere near as busy as
Best Buy was. The one item that did appear to have the attention of
everybody - well, at least the attention of the men/children who had been
dragged into the store by their wives/moms - was an upright video
arcade game unit on sale for $320. It had a collection of classic
Konami arcade games on it including Gyruss, Contra, Blades of Steel
and Castlevania. At first glance I thought that it was pretty cool,
but upon closer inspection, it wasn't quite the "arcade" system that
it was made out to be. I turned on Castlevania and quickly discovered
that it was the version from the Nintendo Entertainment System and not
the original arcade one. It was weird, because some games were the
original arcade versions while others were not. What's worse is that the buttons
and joysticks felt absurdly cheap - ready to break at any moment. But
let's face it; for about $320 you could get a much better MAME cabinet
with whatever games you wanted on it. Still, in a store filled with
bed sheets, dinnerware and woe... it was nice to be able to kill some
time by playing a video game amongst all of the disenchanted holiday
shoppers.
And to the kid who stole
all the good weapons from me in Contra, I just want you to know
two things: 1) Santa isn't bringing you anything but pain this
year and 2) You're adopted.
After that, I headed out
to the parking lot, laughed at more people honking with rage over
parking spots and then drove home. I survived this Black Friday, so
why don't you boy/girl scouts out there whip me up a merit badge for
that, huh? I earned it, so pay up.
We hope this virtual
Black Friday was enough to convince you all that the day after
Thanksgiving should be spent recovering from the day after the day
before Thanksgiving, and that malls are trouble indeed.
Questions or Comments about this piece?
email Dr. Boogie and -RoG-
If you enjoyed this
piece, be sure to check out:
Famous People Are Thankful, Too!
|
