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The Black Friday scramble

The holiday shopping season kicks off with long lines and crowds clamoring for discounted treasures.

By MARYAN PELLAND
Published November 26, 2005

At 4:30 a.m. Friday, traffic around Hernando County's major shopping centers was at midday volume.

Parking lots were full, and holiday shoppers lined up outside stores to vie for limited-quantity bargains. Major retailers and a few venturous small shops opened at 5 and 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving for a traditional kickoff to the seasonal spending frenzy.

Most shoppers said the economy and other uncertainties would not affect their spending this year, even if they have to use credit cards and face the fiscal music in the new year.

Cindy Burch, 35, tending the Salvation Army kettle in front of the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Cortez Boulevard, said she and daughter Ashley, 16, with neighbor Elizabeth Mochrie, 22, came up from St. Petersburg late Thursday night to shop. At 4 a.m., they took over their kettle duties and would be there till midmorning.

"When we got here, the store was already crowded," Cindy Burch said. "Advertised laptops were gone fast, and then people went for other electronics. It's exciting to watch. They've been real generous, too."

Janine Erve, 47 of Spring Hill and her 14-year-old daughter, Toni, were tracking down major items on their Christmas list at Wal-Mart. Toni sought a laptop for her school work. Erve efficiently loaded electronics items into the back of her minivan.

"I got a 20-inch TV-DVD combo, an HP laptop, a DVD recorder/player and some other things for well under $500," she said proudly.

The TV-DVD combo, a hot item at Wal-Mart, went out the door by the dozens. Game Boy systems at $50 were popular. And in every store, "laptop" was the word of the day.

At Target in Spring Hill, a line of about 100 shoppers chatted and checked lists, waiting for the store to open early Friday morning.

Sixty-year-old Rosa Cresoshe of Spring Hill was with her granddaughter, 10-year-old Rosaline. Rosa, originally from Puerto Rico, speaks little English, but Rosaline translated as they sat on a bench outside.

"I like shopping. We'll go around all day," Rosa said. "I do it every year. The best deal I got was a trampoline."

She laughed. She wasn't concerned about a list; she was there for prices. If something was a good price, she said, she would probably buy.

Ethel Guess, chilly and bleary eyed, said her granddaughter dragged her out for the sales.

"Before dawn," she said. "It's her fault."

She nodded at 19-year-old Morissa Kendrick of Spring Hill. Kendrick is a nursing student in Miami; she's home for turkey and bargains. She, too, was looking for DVD players, electronics and other items on her and her grandmother's lists.

"My mom was at Circuit City last night by 9 o'clock," Kendrick said. "She waited all night for the opening because of those $199 laptops, but she didn't get one. They went fast."

Once inside the stores, shoppers had to navigate displays meant to entice dollars out of their wallets. Plush toilet seat covers with grinning Santa faces leered up from one counter. Across an aisle, people scrambled for vinyl-covered seats that looked like an adult car seat with a curved bottom to make the thing rock forward and back.

One shopper told another: "It's a floor chair - and I think it has speakers for like an iPod." Both dived toward the display and secured chairs, delighted with their success.

Some shoppers had well-orchestrated strategies. Carol Lawhorne of Brooksville stooped to a bottom shelf, stacking Star Wars figures neatly on the floor in front of her as she spoke briskly into her cell phone.

Lawhorne, an avid Star Wars collector, said the figures she found were sold out everywhere else.

"My family, we shop like a team. My sister is here in this store, and we have family at all the other stores," she said. "We let each other know what we got."

The most impressive crowds of the morning were at Circuit City and Office Depot. At 6, when Office Depot opened, there was a line half a block long and three people deep. Nearly everyone clutched a sale flier featuring laptops, a $74 DVD recorder and $67 Game Boys.

The crowds thickened as the morning wore on. Verizon's Brian Collins, who manages a group of kiosks at area Circuit City stores, liked what he saw.

"It's been heavy since we opened. Camera phones, broadband, wireless air cards, phones that do streaming video and V Cast are all huge this year," Collins said.

Ron Trask, the supervisor for Verizon in the Spring Hill store, agreed.

"People come to buy a laptop, then come and see us for the air cards," he said. "It's been great."

Verizon employees said the line at Circuit City waiting to get into the store on Friday wrapped around the building to the rear parking area by late Thursday night.

While most shoppers Friday seemed to enjoy the early buying frenzy, at least one shopper who came out early wished she had not.

"I had no idea this happens every year in the middle of the night. It's chaos," Liz Andrews, 22, of Spring Hill, said as she left Target. "This is my first time, and my last. I didn't buy a thing - too complicated in there."

She said she thought she'd wait and shop on Christmas Eve, as she usually does.

- Maryan Pelland can be reached at maryan@ontext.com

[Last modified November 26, 2005, 09:39:15]