Black Friday 2011

This year retailers across the US - from traditional holiday season shopping destinations like Macy's to hard core bargain hunters' darlings like Best Buy and Fry's Electronics, to your day to day stores like Target - open midnight Friday and have made Black Friday a somewhat confusing thing: is it Black Friday anymore, or is it Black Thursday now? Walmart, in its attempt to snatch customers, even managed to open 2 hours earlier, at 10pm Thanksgiving day. Various supermarkets all followed suit and did business during the morning hours of Thanksgiving day.

Deals this year however is pitiful. Amazon had started its pre-thanksgiving sale well ahead of time and deal-seekers like myself have all paid up Jeff Bezos our dues by now given the free shipping policy. Best Buy has some amazing pricing on tablets, such as $250 for the Asus Transformer, but knowing people camp out the day before, I knew there was no chance of me ever seeing one.

But to follow tradition, and to experience the holiday atmosphere, I arrived at Best Buy Milpitas at 11:45pm, the line was devastatingly long...

Look as far as you can, you see the Best Buy? That's right, I couldn't either...

Luckily, the store opened right on time, I only waited for 15mins. And even with such a crowd, they managed to let everybody in.

It was interesting that Thanksgiving leftovers lined the last 100 feet; what people would give for a good deal.

I wanted to see what other places were like so after a quick walk around, I drove to Great Mall Milpitas, which was even a harder battle to get in - traffic stretched for 3 blocks; cars couldn't even get off the highway ramp. Fortunately I knew the area and was able to cut through the crazy, but there was no escaping the parking lot line, which was bumper to bumper for half a mile around, it took more than 30 mins to get a spot because even the back parking lot was absolutely full.

Really? You guys are that crazy for Great Mall?

It was quite a sight even to seasoned Black Friday'ers like me. It was the middle of the night - 1:30am and the mall was completely jam packed!

Most stores at Valley Fair Mall San Jose, given their more upscale status, did not open at midnight. Nonetheless they opened much earlier than past years at 4am. I arrived at 3:30am, but at this ungodly hour and even before most stores were open, the mall was already amazingly crowded. Starbucks even had a line that stretched outside of the door!

I went to check out Abercrombie & Fitch, and was surprised to see people who shell out $300 for a washed out jacket would brave the cold to save $20.

OK, maybe some came for the show, it stirred a bit of a commotion when the dude shedded his shirt

Expanded store hours may be a sign of a change of retailers' strategy to compete. But I also think it is good choice because it is much easier to stay up pass midnight than to go to bed early and wake up at 4am. If long lines everywhere at insane hours are any indication, the San Francisco Bay Area economy is quite strong cause there was a long line even at the Lego store - grown ups buying $300-$400 toys for themselves.

Reporting live from Fremont, California, its Black Friday 2011!