Black Friday 2020

Did you take advantage of black Friday sales this year?

It seems like the days of 3600 people clamoring for 29 tv's at Wally World the morning after Thanksgiving has turned into a seasonal thing that began in October this year. Seriously. Best Buy and Wal Mart started promoting it back in October. Flashlight sellers have been sending me emails since mid-November with 25% off all kinds of things. Now each were for particular items. But I was waiting for blanket coupons where X% off your entire purchase applies. And starting Wednesday they started showing up in my Inbox. Woohoo!!

I bought my wife a couple of flashlights at 30% off and hit e-clearance racks pretty hard online. Mrs Fixer and I went out for a drive to see how crazy the shopping district was and found it like Hiroshima the day after. Our favorite steak joint was open but you'd never know it by all of the empty tables. Even the Golden Corral lot was practically empty. So we ventured towards the mother ship of Black Friday, Wal Mart. Again it was crazy how few people were out. It was like we were out at 1am. Not that I'm complaining. But at 6pm the stores, the restaraunts and the roads were practically empty.

We took advantage of the lack of crowds and walked around a few stores to score some Christmas presents. And I picked up another 3 cell Maglite ML50 along with a few $4 mini lanterns. Was it from all of those online sales for the last few weeks perhaps? I'd say it aint due to the Covid thing since the places are packed on any other given Friday night. It seems like black Friday is no longer the free for all battle royal it once was.

It was quiet around my neck of the woods too, according to the news anyway. I didn't go out anywhere.

There are some good online deals for batteries, so I'm going to replenish my supply of lithium AA and CR123a. The ones I've got on hand have expiration dates of 2018 and 2020. Not sure how much that matters, but a couple of Surefire 123a cells didn't put out enough current to run a light in high mode. :shrug:

I did the in-person black Friday thing once several years ago and that was enough for me. While I found one fairly good deal on a computer, overall it wasn't worth the madness for me. Fortunately this year more retailers have been spreading out their BF deals over the whole month, a great idea in the face of Covid measures.

My wife and I took a walk after midnight thanksgiving, the morning of black Friday last year. We went to the strip mall a few blocks away thinking going uphill would be a challenge, when we saw a cacophony of cops in the target parking lot. We observed a short line of about 6 people by the door so we walked closer. I asked the officer nearest to me if there was a problem and he said no. The store was expecting throngs of people so they hired a dozen officers in 2 shifts. We walked in picked up a few bargains and got all our shopping done in an hour with no crowds to beat down to get what we wanted. A patron even told us to go ahead of him because we only had 2 items at the time. Almost everyone there bought a tv bigger than 50". As we walked across the parking lot, one of the officers recognized me and asked what we were up to. We explained to him being surprised that the store was opened during our walk so he put us in the car and drove us home. My wife reluctantly forked over one of her cotton candy bags as a tip. Black Friday was so boring we decided not to go this year

Cyber Monday killed Black Friday:
Story at 11………