Thanksgiving Black Friday

The last 2 months came and gone in a flash! Can’t believe it is almost the end of the year?!?

After spending 2 weeks back home in Australia, I came back to NY, just at the end of Autumn and experienced Thanksgiving first hand.

It is certainly a much bigger affair than Christmas makes out to be here (well little kids may argue otherwise on that point, but if I go with the amount of vacation days you get, Thanksgiving definitely seems more celebrated). This is also how I experienced what is called “Black Friday” shopping.

Black Friday is the day that follows Thanksgiving, which is always the last Thursday in November. From the sounds of it, serious shoppers plan towards this specific Friday to do all their bargain hunting. This is the equivalent of our Myer Stocktaking sales after Christmas, only much MUCH more spectacular and crazy!!

Usually there are items available for 30% of its usual price (or less) and whilst most shops open up at around 5am in the morning, this year the famous Woodbury Common outlet opened from midnight. I heard that by 5am, the shops were looking decidedly more like stalls at a local flea market and it takes upwards of 1.5hrs to get through the line to the cashier!

I did get up at 5am and did go to a shop to see what the fuss was all about and I found that there were techniques to this Black Friday shopping – Just like the Myer stocktake sales, it is all advertisement, the store probably carries like 3 of those 90% off items where you have to fight the other 50 people in the line for; and the bargain items are usually not stocked up on shelves but left at front table near the cashier. Whilst I didn’t manage to get what I wanted getting up at 5am, persistent also helped. It seems that certain stores, more hidden and less frequent would be a bargain hunter’s best bet, especially for chain store. I was after this external storage and when it was sold out everywhere else I visited in Queens and downtown Manhattan, I ended up finding 3 available in a branch of that store in midtown, possibly forgotten by most as it is between some office buildings with some scaffolding work in front of it. Yeessssssss!