Shoppers get busy

Rampage store at South Coast Plaza opened at 6:30 in the morning to accommodate the day after-Thanksgiving rush. Another Black Friday has come and gone.

Newport-Mesa retailers and shoppers commemorated the annual post-Thanksgiving tradition by getting an early start Friday on the holiday shopping season. By 8 a.m., the halls of South Coast Plaza were about as busy as one would expect on a brisk afternoon. And around midday, shoppers had filled Fashion Island’s open-air corridors, and parking at the retail center was scarce.

For some, work started very early on Friday.

“I opened at 6:30, so I got the early bird crowd,” said Rabia Mechkor, manager at the Rampage store at South Coast Plaza.

Not everyone woke up with the dawn. Corona del Mar resident Chris Lightburn opted to forego a sunrise start to shopping Friday and made a mid-morning arrival to Fashion Island. Around noon, he had already filled two sacks with goods from Pottery Barn and had filled a third, a large Bloomingdale’s bag.

Lightburn said he had “a long ways to go” before he finishes buying gifts for his family.

“[I’m] just getting started,” he said.

For such a busy shopping day, green -- as in the shade of dollar bills -- may seem a more appropriate color than black to describe the Friday after Thanksgiving. Various sources explain the Black Friday moniker as when the holiday shopping season begins in earnest and the volume of money that often changes hands is regarded as enough to allow stores to make profits, putting them in the black, as the saying goes.