For about six hours, I was the only person I knew on Facebook and Twitter. Because I was running around checking out Black Friday junk from midnight to 6am this morning.
My prime goal was to get into Old Navy and score a free copy of LEGO Rock Band (with $20 purchase). The store was set to open at 3:00am, but I got there around 12:30 and queued up.
I was #25 or so. An hour after I got there, the line was around 70 people. By the time the store opened, it had to be 150 plus. Not that anybody had much of a chance at getting the free LEGO Rock Band. Old Navy had a sign up that laid out the very limited supply: 11 copies of the Wii version, 8 for 360 and 7 for PS3. That's barely even worth advertising.
Once the supply chain info got out, I figured my chances were pretty slim. Even the best odds I could give myself were 50/50. As we approached the opening bell, amazingly my place in line actually increased thanks to people just showing up and joining friends and family already in place. So I was entirely reliant on people being honest and not grabbing a copy for each member of the family (which was supposedly not allowed), and I had to have only six people in front of me the PS3 version.
In the picture above, dead center is a gaggle of Mennonites who showed up around 1:30am to hand out free coffee and hot chocolate. And little religious tracts. "Read the front and back, it will make a lot of sense," they said. Right. Nice marketing strategy. My line-neighbors reported the hot cocoa had a weird aftertaste.
40 minutes later, some college guys went around trying to sell coffee and doughnuts for $1. One of their number hung out the side of a van waving a big American flag. They were informed that the Mennonites had already been through.
In the end, I squeaked through on the LEGO Rock Band deal. The people in front of me wanted the Wii version, but had to settle on PS3 or 360 as the Wii copies all vanished before the employees got to us. Their plan was to do a Walmart exchange and get the Wii version... so they took 360 and left the last PS3 copy for me. A Black Friday kindness miracle.
It was cold and rainy for nearly three hours on an uncovered sidewalk, but it wasn't too onerous an exchange for free LEGO Rock Band. And $21 worth of Old Navy shirts for Rhonda.
After finishing Old Navy, I hopped over to Toys R Us... the word among the line-sitters was that TRU was a disaster scene. I wanted to see that.
TRU opened at midnight and all accounts had the kind of line that encircles the entire parking lot. By the time I got there at 3:30am, the line was gone, but the inside was packed. I had some coupons and gift cards to use, so I turned an $85 cart into just under $60. Picked up Marvel Superhero Squad (Wii) as another Christmas gift for Clark, as well as some marked-down impulse buys for his stocking.
Since I was buying a video game, I had to wait in the RZone line, which took an hour. The clerk, upon noticing that nothing I picked up was specific to any early morning Black Friday deal, asked why I had bothered to come out during the madness. My answer was that I was enjoying it.
And I was.
Earlier in the day, my sister half-jokingly asked if I would go to Target to get her one of those Metallic Blue DSi Mario bundles. At the time, I wasn't planning on it, but since I was leaving TRU after 4:40am and Target was opening at 5:00am... what the hell.
The Target line stretched all the way around the store. I was standing in what is normally the flood plain drainage area. But when Target opened the doors at 5, it was more or less a steady walk from the back all the way inside. Of course, then I had to get to Electronics and line up there to see about the DSi bundles.
While I was waiting for the opportunity to merely ask if they still had any (they did, probably twenty Mario bundles and thirty Brain Age bundles visible by 5:30am), I finally hit upon why I was enjoying this. It felt like being at a convention.
When I go to a gaming con, there's always this pleasant feeling of being around people who like the same stuff I like. Here, stuck among shopping carts and people in pajamas, I was standing along with those doing something I've always enjoyed: shopping. Now, not everybody was enjoying it, I'm sure. But they were all doing it, and that's good enough for me.
I don't like traffic. Or driving much at all, really. I don't like people. I'm not one of those guys who strikes up conversations with strangers. I don't even like talking to waiters. But despite Black Friday being largely composed of traffic and people, I was nursing an energy-drink adrenaline rush all night. I can't believe I never tried Black Friday before.
I's sure the fact that I did it all at night made quite a difference as well. I was in bed by 6:15am. If I was trying to hit three key Black Friday locations during the day, I probably would have hated it. But being out at 4:00am, buying stuff, good prices, beating the night... that's my native element.
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