Results tagged “blackfriday”

Back in the day, it was customary to buy the newspaper right around Thanksgiving and check out all the ads and circulars to see which store had the best Black Friday deal. But now things are a bit easier, thanks to bargain-hunting website gotadeal.com, a site that specializes in bringing consumers the newest and cheapest deals from major chain stores such as Target, Best Buy, and Walmart, among others.

        

Now that the holiday season has descended, and since we had an hour to kill downtown, we thought we'd wander around the State Street corridor and document some of the insanity. Even in a shit economy, thousands were in the heart of the Loop for bargain hunting and tree-gazing. Stores like Macy's (Yes, Fields Fans, we've ventured inside) and Sears were packed with throngs of shoppers, and Daley Plaza was nearly impenetrable with curious residents, suburbanites and tourists looking to complete their stein collection or overdose on sugar-coated nuts. We didn't have the balls or the patience to venture north into the lion's den of North Michigan Avenue; any reports from survivors would be appreciated.

The Trib has a reader update page for Black Friday craziness but things seem...relatively tame. Police were called early Friday morning (like, 2:40 a.m. early) to Gurnee Mills Malls to take care of a rowdy bunch of shoppers waiting on the early morning store openings. Still, nothing can compare to the tragedy in Long Island where a Wal Mart worker was killed in a stampede of early morning shoppers and a crush of customers at the same store also injured a pregnant woman. Earlier reports said she suffered a miscarriage but those have been retracted.

Ah, Black Friday. You always present us with deals and videos of crazy people trampling each other so they can be the first to grab that $500 HDTV or Tickle Me Elmo or whatever the kids are crazy about these days. It's become such big business that there's even a struggle amongst websites to be the first to break the Black Friday ads - even Twitter is in on the act this year. But even with more attention than ever on the day, there's also more pessimism than ever because of the large decrease in consumer spending in 2008. As the economy continues to slide, will Black Friday numbers follow suit? Some stores are so concerned about profits, they're offering freebies to those brave souls who sprint through the doors at the crack of dawn in hopes to entice more people to shop. And come Saturday, as the Black Friday numbers roll in, all eyes will shift to Cyber Monday as online retailers try to fight the slumping economy as well. And, of course, there are those who fight Black Friday and all it stands for.

Though rushing to the mall or local CrapMart the day after Thanksgiving has become trad for millions of Americans, many Americans spend Black Friday boycotting shopping altogether in protest. Buy Nothing Day -- promoted since the early 1990s by the zany culture jammers at Adbusters -- has become a holiday for anti-consumerist folk who enjoy taking a stand against all the shopping and spending that inevitably produces lots of debt, trash and disappointment (that American Apparel hoodie didn't really fix the interminable gnawing feeling in your soul, now did it?)

Or, in honor of the start of holiday shopping season, we should probably christen this week's installment the "Black Friday Buffet". Anyway, let's get to it. West Lakeview Liquors weekly tastings will focus on Christmas ales (tonight) and whiskies (tomorrow). The French Wine Society is sponsoring a wine and cheese tasting at Taste Food & Wine in Rogers Park from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Cost is $30 for Wine Society members; $35 all others ChicaGourmets and...

If you're a writer, Thanksgiving weekend is always rife with material. In addition to amateur night at the bars on T-Day Eve (if you were brave enough to venture out), there are the usual family shenanigans on the day of, and a juicy Black Friday anecdote or two. What's more, the office Christmas party is approaching. If you're feeling starved for material around this time of the year, then you obviously aren't paying attention.

For some morbid reason, we really dig Black Friday.

We always tend to think other people celebrate holidays like the Griswolds in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – a week-long shopping, eating and bickering extravaganza with extended family. But for many of us, Thanksgiving and Christmas end up being an afternoon or evening of time with the relatives, and that night we’re back in the city twiddling our thumbs.

Ah, Carson Pirie Scott & Co. What a store. Or, at least, what a building. While we don't shop there that often, mostly for their propensity to take plus-size fashion tips from retired schoolteachers, we admire the hell out of the building. Built between 1898 and 1906, not only does everyone in Chicago know it and take vast pride in its beauty, logic stands that there must be a ton of history tied up in it.

If you’re one of those plan-ahead types of people who get started on holiday shopping long before Black Friday, you may want to consider all of the merchandise our beloved Chicago Transit Authority has to offer. If our gift recommendation has you wondering what in the world we’re talking about, you’re probably not alone. Despite providing more than one million rides a day, the CTA only managed to scrape up $20,000 in merchandise sales, of...

Chicagoist has long avoided Black Friday, that day of misery following Thanksgiving, when millions of men, women, and children descend upon malls and other retailers across the country in hopes of scoring some fabulous holiday deals. However, we do realize that some people really get into the spirit of crushing crowds and waiting in freezing temperatures outside Circuit City at 3 a.m., as some of our friends have been known to do. Retailers are catching...

The people of Chicago have spoken. And apparently, we think a few rounds of Dance Dance Revolution is perfect for getting our swerve on. We saw this press release over at ABC7 listing some of the winners of AOL City Guide Chicago’s “City’s Best 2006” poll. While we quibbled with some of the choices (Home Run Inn for Best Pizza?), the choice of ESPN Zone as the “best spot for first dates” floored us. Sure,...

Ahhhh. Thanksgiving. The time to visit family and, later, fight with them. It's a day where we try to convince people that Black Friday is actually named as such for another reason and we're not wasting an extra day off of work fighting for deals on sweaters that we wouldn't give to our amazingly adorable golden retriever. Thanksgiving means we watch football and get stupidly wasted the night before because there is some unspoken rule...

Yeah, kind of sounds like the set up for a joke (and there are plenty about this game on Fark). But in suburban Skokie, it's an annual tradition. The Indo Jew Bowl started out as a way for a tight-knit bunch of Niles North High School grads to catch up during the Thanksgiving weekend, by facing off in a friendly game of football -- Indians vs. Jews. And if anybody happens to get hurt, at least there will be planty of doctors on the field.