Thanksgiving Day in New York meant that all the shops were closed that day. Not a big deal really.
But to compensate for this one day shopping loss there is a concept called Black Friday. Black Friday is the beginning of the official Christmas shopping season in the US and shops open their doors with special Black Friday offers very early the day after Thanksgiving. Very early, as early as 4am in the morning. Who on earth wants to go shopping at 4am in the morning I wondered?
Well quite a lot of people. When I left the cinema at 21.30 that Thursday evening, the queue of people waiting to get into Circuit City (a big computer store) on Union Square was quite long. So people were actually queueing 6.5 hours to get into a shop opening at 4am? I found that slightly insane, but then I find the whole Christmas presents race insane and I have abandoned it long ago.
It got even more insane. Or maybe insane is not the right word here, the right word is “tragic”. Very tragic. A Wallmart on Long Island (an area near New York city) opened their doors at 5am and a lot of people couldn’t wait to get in. In fact it got so busy and out of hand that the eager shoppers tramped a Wallmart employee to death when the door opened, blinded as they were by those great Black Friday offers.
Did anybody say credit crunch? Happy Thanksgiving. And Black Friday indeed. Crazy people.