As I’ve said before, covering Black Friday shopping madness in Springfield is one of my favorite assignments. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it’s the middle of the night. But there is such a feeling of excitement and fun in the air that I can’t help but enjoy being out and about with some of central Illinois’ most hard-core bargain hunters. I absolutely love it.
The last several years I’ve blogged Black Friday throughout the night, updating readers on the length of lines, posting photos and talking to shoppers about what they’re after and how they’re holding up in the cold. Two years ago I used a laptop. Last year I was able to blog solely using my smart phone. This year I’ll be using an iPad and Cover It Live, which I’m really looking forward to because it will enable me to post real-time updates and also chat with readers throughout the night. Check in at SJ-R.com closer to Black Friday for more details.
This is the newspaper story that resulted from last year’s Black Friday live-blogging.
Black Friday trumps Thanksgiving for some shoppers
Nov. 26, 2010
If you want to talk about folks who take their Black Friday shopping serious, meet the four women who were at the front of the Springfield Toys R Us line Thursday night – Desiree Embree, Darcy Miller, Jessica Hamblin and Teage Marcum.
Embree, of Riverton, and Miller, of Petersburg, are sisters. Hamblin, of Oakford, and Marcum, of San Jose, are sisters, too. Neither pair knew the other pair until they got acquainted standing in line overnight, but they got along so well you would have thought they’d known each other a lifetime. They all got to the store about 5 p.m. Thursday to wait for its 10 p.m. opening and special sales.
Embree technically was the first in line.
Asked what she was hoping to buy, she replied: “Zhu Zhu Pets. … Give me a second – I’ll get my list here. Zhu Zhu Pets, the Crayola stuff, Bugsby stuff, Aquasand …
“That’s what I’m getting here. I’ve got a list for all my other stores, too,” she said.
Embree and Miller, who’ve been Black Friday shoppers for more than a decade, had an entire strategy worked out for all the stores they wanted to hit Black Friday, including – but not limited to – Target, Shopko, Kmart, Hallmark, Michaels and Walmart.
Those were their early stops.
“And then we gotta grab breakfast,” Embree said, before continuing with the list.
Embree’s and Miller’s Black Friday operation involved an intricate network of family members, vehicles, timing and carefully planned shopping lists. Hamblin and Marcum had similar plans. Their ultimate objective was to complete all their holiday shopping this weekend.
“We take our Black Friday shopping serious,” Hamblin said. “We missed Thanksgiving dinner.”
“I’ve got three kids, so I’m going for lots of stuff (in Toys R Us) – mainly Barbies, dinosaurs, Thomas the Train,” she added.
All four women agreed they did not care for Toys R Us’s strategy of having two different Black Friday sales – one that started at 10 p.m. Thursday and a second that started at 5 a.m. Friday
“We want to be able to get it all done and over with and move on to another store without coming back,” Miller said.
With overnight temperatures plunging to the low 20s, the women did as much as they could to stay warm. They had hand and foot warmers, lots of layers of clothing, coats with hoods, coffee and other hot drinks.
“I think I have five shirts on,” Hamblin said.
While Hamblin downloaded a Black Friday app for her phone to monitor deals as they were made public, Embree did things the old-fashioned way, sitting down with the newspaper, going through the ads one by one and circling the best deals.
Hamblin said she expected to continue shopping throughout Friday, ending about 7 p.m. Embree didn’t expect to end her Black Friday shopping until noon or 1 p.m., but that doesn’t mean she was finished for the weekend. She said she would sleep Friday afternoon, then return to Kmart on Clear Lake Avenue Friday night to camp out for this morning’s early bird deals there. The store opens at 6 a.m. today.
“I live for this day. I don’t care about Christmas or Thanksgiving. I love Black Friday,” she said.