Black Friday for fun not gifts
Not all the shoppers hitting the stores on Black Friday are trying to cross names off a gift list, my colleague Jamie Smith Hopkins found out while talking to shoppers at Arundel Mills in Hanover this morning.
Elkridge resident Chalese Carthran, 17, and 16-year-old friends Anaysia Allen and Kelsey Swann got up at 3 a.m. so they could buy things for themselves.
“I need clothes,” Carthran said with a grin, taking a break just after 10 a.m. in the Arundel Mills mall. “I like to shop.”
“It sounded fun,” added Allen, a Baltimore resident.
It was the friends’ first time shopping on Black Friday. They bought computer gear and clothing, though the electronics deals struck them as better than the clothing sales. They’d already made one trip back to the car to unload their purchases.
“We got a lot,” Carthran said.
Anybody else find goodies for yourself? Anybody go out just to hang out and be in the crowds.
Comments
You've stumbled upon the real 'secret' of Black Friday in the last two sentences. Any serious (and more importantly, candid) shopper will admit to those two premises. Sure, there are shoppers who make a dent in the list, but an awful lot of Holiday Shopping is about shopping for moi!
Posted by: ruth | November 27, 2009 4:51 PM
It has always seemed to me that the people who scour the net for deals and line up outside stores before sunrise are buying for themselves more than buying gifts for others. People don't rile themselves into a frenzied orgy of shopping to buy things they're going to give to someone else in a month. They do it to buy things for themselves. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I did it myself.
Posted by: Brandon | November 28, 2009 7:39 PM