Yes, I know this is late, but I didn’t have internet access at home until Friday evening (we just moved), and I spent much of the rest of the weekend sleeping. Sue me. Anyway, I thought I’d relate my Black Friday story (original, I know).

Let me preface this with a short recap of my experience on Black Friday 2006: After getting into Best Buy shortly after it opened at 5 AM, I got what I wanted, got on line, and was out within an hour. That’s not bad at all, considering that the line itself snaked around the store’s appliance aisles (among others) all the way to the back, by the TVs. I made the short trip to Circuit City upon leaving, and got there around 6:15. I got on line by 7 ... and my receipt was dated thusly (I’m approximating the time): 11:15 AM, Friday, November 24, 2006. That’s right, I was on line for OVER THREE HOURS. A friend of mine vowed never to return to Circuit City on a normal day, let alone a Black Friday, and let’s just say that I should have agreed with him.

I checked out the Black Friday 2007 ads at bfads.net prior to their official public release and was underwhelmed: with regards to Black Friday, I’m pretty much only in it for the DVD deals (I have a pretty significant collection). It seems as if they’re simply trying to get rid of the big-ticket items more and more with each year — Best Buy had 10 different HDTVs for sale at ridiculously discounted prices. In fact, I wasn’t even going to go out this year because the only thing that originally piqued my interest was a half-price sale on all HBO DVDs at Best Buy; I would be able to get Season 3, Part 2 of Entourage for $16.99. That was when I saw Hamza’s “I am a consumer whore!” post and realized that I had the opportunity to pick up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $48 (20% off) at Target (for the last time, you morons, it’s not “Tar-zhay”). I couldn’t pass that up, so a few friends and I decided to brave the 30° temperatures (and 20+ mile-per-hour winds) on Long Island that morning and go out.

For the past few years, my friends and I have done the Black Friday thing, and since we don’t want to go to bed early and have to wake up at an ungodly hour, we simply start a poker game late on Thanksgiving night and then play until we decide to head out for the sales. We started playing around 9:30, and a few friends came by around 11. They said they had just come from Best Buy, and there was apparently already a line around the store (and it’s a big freakin’ building). So we decided to forgo that store, and since we didn’t like the idea of waiting too long in the cold, we left for Circuit City at 4ish, hoping to get in when it opened (5 AM), get our stuff, get out, and get to Target by its 6 AM opening. I didn’t have anything specific to get there; my friend wanted to get Guitar Hero II on Xbox 360 (it was on sale for $59.99) for a friend, so I figured I’d just wade through the bins of $3.99 DVDs and find something I liked.

My friend wanted to get food, so by the time we got to Circuit City, it was just past 5. Needless to say, there was a line around the corner that was over 500 feet long (and looked like it had over 500 people on it). By 6:15 AM, we had made it about halfway to the corner — maybe 300 feet — and I could barely feel my toes. My friend realized that all the Guitar Hero II bundles would almost certainly have sold out by then, so he suggested cutting our losses and leaving. But I wasn’t going home empty-handed, even though we had heard from some other friends that the line at Target was pretty long as well. So we got to Target at 6:20, and my story gets much happier from then on. We walked right in (that particular Target is absolutely massive, like the size of a Costco) and ran to the video game section, where I found what looked to be 20–30 pristine copies of CoD 4 on PS3 on the shelf. Also, I was even able to get half of my Christmas shopping done by picking up The Orange Box on 360 for my brother for the same price as CoD 4 — $48. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the other half of my shopping is for my parents — yep, I’m lucky; I don’t have to buy many gifts.


This is what Target looked like — except with more bullseye logos

In an extra special super happy bonus, I went to Best Buy around 9:30 AM and found plenty of copies of the Entourage DVD that I had originally planned to get, so in the end, the day turned out quite well. But I am NEVER going to Circuit City on a Black Friday ever again — at least not that particular store (whoever designed its layout is a moron, and it’s too small to begin with). I hope you were all able to get what you wanted as well!