Early birds’ behavior is boggling

It is time. Time for the annual Black Friday report, that is.

It began to interest me some years ago. But now I’ve become obsessed with it -- the day-after-Thanksgiving, door-buster, line-up-in-the-middle-of-the-nightmadness official start to the Christmas shopping season.

I’m sure you saw all the usual reports from Fashion Island, South Coast Plaza, the Glendale Galleria -- hordes of sale-crazed shoppers, wandering from one store to the next, loaded with shopping bags like so many pack mules plodding through the Dakota badlands.

Keep in mind my simultaneous revulsion-obsession with Black Friday is that I am severely allergic to shopping and would rather eat a bug than go shopping on a Tuesday afternoon in April. To actually do so on Black Friday would cause my airways to shut down, major organs to fail, 911 to be called; and even with the defibrillator paddles turned up to overdrive, I would be flat-lining. And that’s all before I found a parking space.

Do you know why the day after T-Day is called Black Friday? I’ll tell you. It’s a double entendre, or what the French call, a play on words.

One meaning is that the whole experience is so horrific and exhausting for store employees that it’s reminiscent of Black Tuesday -- October 29, 1929, the day the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began. The other is that the day is so profitable for retailers that it’s the day of the year that puts them from the red to the black.

But according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, known to retail industry insiders as the International Council of Shopping Centers, there’s one assumption that’s horse pucky: The day after T-Day has never been the busiest shopping day of the year -- door busters or no door busters. Since 1995, most of the busiest shopping days each year have been between December 18 and December 23, with the majority of them December 21 to 23, which tells me male-type shoppers are still an important part of the equation.

According to the council, about 130 million Americans hit the shops, stores and malls on Black Friday last year. Considering there are about 300 million of us, 130 million is a lot.

But here’s the statistic that might explain why Black Friday can’t compare with those late-December days when total panic and desperation set in: Only 31% of that thundering, Black Friday horde actually buys anything, which means more than two-thirds of them are lookers, not shoppers.

Be that as it may, how did things go on Friday? Were people cheerful and courteous and pleasant, still warm with the glow of Thanksgiving and looking forward to the Christmas season?

Whaddaunutz?

At Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise, Fla., an impressive crowd was lined up at the Brandsmart USA store, which was offering a number of door-buster sales on electronic stuff.

When the steel security gate was raised, the crowd rushed inside, trampling each other and pushing display counters out of the way. Josephine Hoffman, 73, of Coconut Creek was knocked down and trampled.

“I was trying to get out of the way, but they knocked me down,” Hoffman told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as her two daughters stood beside her and called 911 for paramedics. “I hit my head on the floor, and people stepped on me. I don’t understand why people do these things.”

That’s two of us, Josephine.

The Associated Press reported that when the doors opened at 5 a.m. at a Wal-Mart outside Grand Rapids, Mich., a woman and a 13-year-old girl suffered minor injuries in a similar stampede with others going down hard as they tried to step over them.

At a Wal-Mart in Orlando, Fla., when a man cut in line waiting for the big opening, he was wrestled to the ground and roughed up by other shoppers.

Apparently, people in Florida shop the same way they vote.

In Billings, Mont., shoppers started lining up outside the Best Buy store for Friday’s 5 a.m. opening at 7 p.m. Thanksgiving night. Low temperature in Billings on Thursday night? Twenty-six degrees.

“The lines are atrocious, but the buys are good,” shopper Sarah Nelson told the Billings Gazette as she headed into Best Buy.

Let’s review: 10 hours through the night on a sidewalk in Billings, Mont., in 26 degrees. Could we get a little more detail on exactly how good those buys were, Sarah? Did the first ten people in line get a free iPod and, I don’t know, $150,000 cash?

If that’s the case, it might be worth it. Possibly. But I doubt it.

So what is it this year that gets people up in the middle of the night from Maine to California, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam?

Well, electronic stuff, of course -- iPods, laptops, PCs, plasma screens, etc. IPods in particular are multiplying faster than mutant viruses, with about 1,135 variations.

For smaller people, there appears to be no way to live without an iDog from Hasbro Toys -- a robotic pup that moves and grooves to the sounds of whatever music it’s playing.

The must-have toy is apparently Dora the Explorer’s Talking Kitchen, which according to Fisher-Price, “... captures the unique Dora styling with a life-size Dora who will be cooking right along with the child.”

If that doesn’t put you on the sidewalk overnight in Billings, nothing will.

And if you have a Paris Hilton in training, you have no choice but to get out there and get her the Versace Barbie from Mattel Toys. The Barbette is decked out, according to Mattel, in “... an alluring sleeveless taupe gown with a long hip hugging bodice of laced taupe ribbon above ruffles of chiffon falling vertically to the floor creating a sumptuous sense of motion.”

Price? Are you sitting down? About $140 -- depending on where you find it. Wow. No wonder Ken split.

So that’s it then. You are current. Black Friday, Barbie and Billings.

Any questions? I didn’t think so.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at ptrb4@aol.com.

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