It Was a Black, Black Friday at Best Buy

Break out the pepper spray! Strap on your trampling shoes! IT'S BLACK FRIDAY TIME, BITCHES!

On this Black Friday eve around 7pm, after a day of PURE DEADLY SIN THANKSGIVING GLUTTONY with my three siblings, I found myself across the street from Atlantic Center at a friend's third floor apartment on South Portland, where we had an all-star view of the gaggle of bargain hunters that began at the front door of Best Buy. By the time midnight rolled around, the crowd was wrapped around the block onto South Portland, all the way down South Elliott & then down onto Hanson Pl.

Oh, what people will do for a stupid Black Friday deal.

As the night progressed & the line grew & we listened to music & consumed beers, there were these moments between songs where the sounds of the Best Buy crowd took over: there was an NYPD van parked curbside & a few cops near the front of the line. Best Buy employees walked up & down the line providing info & answering questions & shizz. At one point, some dude broke out a bullhorn & announced to the crowd that if anyone cut in line, they would be arrested. Then he repeated his warning just in case peeps missed it the first time.

With a few beers in me, this was when I decided to go down & walk the line myself, chatting with folks. As someone who finds the combination of long lines & consumer frenzy repulsive, I just had to see what the big deal was. I planned on starting with the people at the front of the line but by the time I got down there, they’d already started letting people in, so I walked down the line a bit.

The first people I spoke with had been there since 1pm & had brought along chairs in preparation. They'd come with hopes of snagging one of a limited fifteen BIG SCREEN BIG SAVINGS type TV's but as they were at least fifty deep into the line, they figured that wasn't going to happen, so they were just hoping to save big on some sort of TV.

On a super non-SUPER SAVINGS related note, the woman in the photo got a kick out of the fact that I waited until after I took their pic to tell them it was for a website called "Fucked in Park Slope."

After chatting with them, I turned the corner onto South Elliott & a little bit down, I talked to these two dudes who were in the market for laptops.

Apparently the ones they were looking to get were going for just under $200. To take advantage of these TOTALLY AWESOME SAVINGS, they got in line at around 6pm.

Closer to the end of the South Elliott portion of the line, I stopped to find out what brought these three folks to Black Friday.

They told me they arrived just around 11pm hoping to get BLACK FRIDAY BLOWOUT SAVINGS on Blu-Ray players. The dude on the right wore ear muffs, which was a good call, considering they probably had at least another four to five hours of waiting in line.

Out onto Hanson Place, at the very end of the line, at what I am unofficially declaring "a thousand people deep" stood this lad & lass, who had just showed up.

She needed a lil’ more karaoke in her life, so she hoped to get SMALL TICKET SAVINGS on a sweet karaoke machine. He was looking for a TV but, given the length of the line, was a bit skeptical about there being anything left by the time they actually reached the front doors. Just before I took their photo, she asked "are we supposed to look happy?" Those six words right there pretty much sum up the Black Friday experience for me.

Personally, I find the whole Black Friday hoopla to be a bunch of utter nonsense. I mean, I get it. For some folks, this is their only chance to get a friend or family member something cool for the holidays. You gotta' do what you gotta' do. Still, why these hordes of people were willing to stand in line for hours, especially when they probably could've done all their shopping online & avoided all the in-store insanity, baffles me to no end.

Did you wait in some crazy-ass line on Black Friday? How do you rationalize being a part of the madness? Let me know below. I promise not to judge you (too harshly).

Read way more from Shawn at eatdrinksnack.com.