The Madness After Thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving is known as either "Green Friday" or "Black Friday," depending on which side of the counter you're on. The management and corporate side of retailers call it Green Friday because they know they are going to make some cash (this Friday brought in 8 million dollars, 10% more money than the year before [Trib 11/30/04]). The clerks and customer service representatives know it as Black Friday because it is the closest thing to "Hell on Earth." For the past four years, me and my buddies have been taking part in Black and Green Friday, merrily adding oil to the cogs of our capitalist society. It's madness, it's insanity, it's a heck of a lot of fun.

The plan is usually the same every year: we wake up sometime in the middle of the night, pile into a Chevy Blazer driven by my friend's dad, and drive to Best Buy in Robinson Twp. Once there we stand in line, in the freezing black cold, until 6am when they open the doors. We do some thrifty shopping, and then head over to Circuit City to go through the same process. Then, tired and numb, we go to breakfast somewhere and then go back home to sleep. It's been the same for the past four years, but each time we go through it it's a new experience.

The first year was total chaos. The 100+ body line running along the side of Best Buy met with a crowd of late comers who thought they could just walk right into the store as soon as they open the doors. It was an accurate re-enactment of the movie "The Warriors" as these two groups meshed together with a fury of fists and yelling. I saw a man ripped down to the ground and punched in the face just because he was trying to walk passed the line! While this was all very entertaining for me, I decided that it wasn't what I was looking for at 6 in the morning. Luckily, with each consecutive year they make the process alot safer and more organized. Now they have security watching the doors, only letting in about 50 people in at a time.

This year me, Nick, Pops, and Dom all slept for about an hour at Dom's house, and then headed out with Dom's dad at 3:30AM. It was only 26 degrees outside, and while we thought we were prepared in the clothing department, apparently Mother Nature works out. After the first 20 minutes I was officially freezing my buns off. Actually everything on the top 2/3 of my body was pretty comfy, but wearing my Pumas (which are 40% mesh) probably wasn't the best idea. It felt as if I was standing on frozen shards of glass for an hour and half... but it wasn't as bad as Pops, who was wearing only a hoodie.

When 6AM rolled around, the doors slide open and we were of the first 50 let in the store. While most folks were sprinting to the back of the store to grab $20.00 DVD players or a laptop for $499.00, me and my friends strolled to the DVD and videogame section. Looking back on it, our motives for going early have always been sort of ridiculous. We never buy anything big, and last year some of us didn't get anything at all! This year, the biggest thing I wanted was "Spider-Man 2" for PS2 for $20. Yeah, that and "Mean Girls" on DVD for $10. As you can see it was well worth me getting up so early.

There weren't really any fights this year... but I was awful close to starting one. There was a woman slightly ahead of us in line who did nothing but talk the entire two hours we waited in line. She insisted on telling everyone about her experience shopping last year, her son's desire for a PS2 memory card, and something about how she was absolutely moronic (or maybe I just heard that). Alas, I held back from cutting line and punching her in the neck so I could get inside of the store and get "Die Hard" for five bucks. I think I made the right choice.

I'm still looking forward to doing it all again next year. But this is just my view on the kick-off of the holiday season. Check out Larry's entry on the Cellar Dweller blog if you want to heard the other side of the story.