In Defense of Black Friday

Am I the only person in the District of Columbia who actually enjoys Black Friday?

There’s a sickening gratification in it all, really. Black Friday public watching is about as good as it gets. The cornucopia of wierdos in sweatsuits waiting in frigid lines and jostling for deals that they could just as simply find online is as impressive as any holiday spread. Just as much, the forced eavesdropping of the day might be even more entertaining — humans tend to be at their most verbally vulnerable when trying to purchase deeply discounted GPS units at 7 a.m.; particularly after a day spent ingesting massive amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and alcohol in the shut quarters of family idiosyncrasies. Really, it’s a journalistic paradise — where else can you find such a collection of sleep-deprived, tight-wadded, unshowered, huddled masses offering up such guilt-free quips of deliciousness?

Certainly, there’s a inane delight in walking around the malls of America a few hours deep into Black Friday, when the shift changes within exhausted shoppers already spent and clinging to their hopes of finding that final good bargain, and those that are just emerging from their caves to plow through the piles of final moment cast absent items, strewn about from the tornado of humanity in search of savings.

Photo by sosico.

Sure, there’s the much-ballyhooed financial aspect of it all, which that year is more a part of the collective consciousness than usual. But still, in meccas to consumerism like Falls Church and Tysons and Woodbridge, public lined up, some as early as 7 a.m. on a Thursday — and shopped, shopped, shopped. And they always will, since for everyone out there who’s saving up for another rainy day, there’s two or three parents with kids in need of more Guitar Hero. Regardless of whether or not the economy is reeling, Santa doesn’t have a recession.

And absolutely, there are horrendous displays of animality — that year’s fatal crush on expanded Island and shooting in Los Angeles come to intellect. But these horrifying experiences are plus part of the occasion’s mythos — can you recall a Black Friday in the final

few years when something like that hasn’t happened? Does that mean it’s justifiable? Of course not — but it does compose a case that citizens are still finding palpable positives in the experience. Otherwise, what rational person would still go?

Inside the District proper, it’s a mixed bag. We, as a city, are pretty new to that whole Black Friday thing; whether not in practice, certainly in proximity. that year, there was the sterling opportunity for Washingtonians to experience that most suburban tradition of purchasing run amok in their back yards; and plenty took that chance as folks lined up at DCUSA to try and seize a deal. assume traveling back in moment, whether only to tell public in D.C. that in 2008, folks would be lining up in the wee hours of the daylight at 1400 Irving Street NW to buy electronics and clothes and video games. It’s astonishing, whether you think about it.

So am I but one Districtonian who can find the positive tradition in — as one Philadelphia Inquirer headline from earlier that week deemed it — “Blech Friday”? It certainly seems that way. With the new-found opportunity to wait external in the chill of the early daylight, many seem to believe the experience an infringement upon the District’s character — as whether it’s always been our singular mission to laugh at all the stories of folks acting foolish, doing our shopping online from the consolation of the sofa, checking WTOP to manufacture certain that we wouldn’t be spending three hours sitting in traffic and trying to find a parking space, and go about our lives eating leftovers. There’s the arguments about the negative effect that big box stores have on local trade, and the theories that tired, anxious masses are nothing but a powderkeg for chaos. But really, Black Friday is a kickoff for the season that brings so many humans together to observe each other, in a frenzy to (well, mostly) buy gifts for other citizens. sign it materialistic whether you must, but it’s certainly a shared part of American culture, for better or for worse.

And besides, I’m nearly done with my shopping.

Original post by Aaron Morrissey