Zombies have been on my brain lately (pun intended).
You know that scene in zombie movies when survivors are trapped on some sort of elevated platform, and the hungry undead swarm around them, hundreds of hands outstretched as they reach desperately for their next meal?
That's all I could think about late Thursday evening as I watched people mob the $10 and under DVD/Blu-Ray stands at Walmart in Selinsgrove, and I'm told it was a similar scene at the Coal Township location.
If director George A. Romero used zombies as a metaphor for American consumerism is his 1978 undead classic "Dawn of the Dead," it wouldn't surprise me if something like this was his inspiration.
I'm not saying by any means that every person who braved the crazy crowds for crazy deals is one of the shopping dead. After all, I went out to snag a few savings and help my siblings do the same so their kids will have a bountiful Christmas morning, and we certainly have no bloodlust for bargains.
I'm talking about the people like that woman in a Los Angeles Walmart, who must really have thought she was in a zombie apocalypse and considered Xbox 360 consoles her key to survival.
The Associated Press reported she used pepper spray on a crowd of shoppers in order to get an advantage. She managed to escape, but she could face felony battery charges.
And then there's the people at the Selinsgrove Walmart who destroyed the cardboard displays because they couldn't wait another second for Walmart employees to open them. They grabbed fistfuls of movies and TV shows before grabbing even more. I dove in headfirst and found the newest X-Men movie on Blu-Ray for 10 big ones. However, after five minutes of gridlock and feeling the radiating heat of hundreds of human bodies packed together, I decided it wasn't worth fighting for more movies and moved on. I would have to find "Sons of Anarchy" and "True Blood" elsewhere.
Same everywhere
I'm told by my cousin, Trish Spearance Hart, that the video game displays in another part of the store were no different. By 9:30 p.m., customers had ripped apart the outer boxes from around the Nintendo Wii, XBox and Playstation 3 games.
"In a matter of minutes, almost all the games were off the display and the display itself was destroyed. You could see people stepping on games that had fallen to the ground," she said. "You could see where customers all over had gotten into things before 10 p.m. because boxes were destroyed or plastic wrap conveniently had holes in to grab items. That was the worst I have seen it."
A few News-Item co-workers had similar stories. Photographer Michael Staugaitis went to the Coal Township Walmart a half-hour after the 10 p.m. sales started, hoping for "Batman: Arkham City" or "Gears of War 3" for Xbox, and found nothing but a battered display case and leftover "AC/DC Live: Rock Band" games. Another co-worker's boyfriend reported hearing "boxes flying and people yelling" once 10 p.m. came.
The calm of the storm
Surprisingly, the television frenzy was the calmest part of my experience. My family members took their tickets for their products, stood in their orderly lines until midnight and walked away unscathed with their item of choice. My siblings exited the store at least four hours later with ridiculously low-priced televisions (32-inch Emerson HDTVs for $188 and a 19-inch Sansui HDTV for $98).
Parking lots at both local Walmarts were overflowing with vehicles. At Selinsgrove, shoppers were using the Plaza House parking lot as overflow. At Coal Township, SUVs were pulled onto the grassy hill along Route 61 at the north side of the parking lot as a last resort for a spot.
In the chaos, success
Even more surprisingly, the time spent waiting for televisions is when I most enjoyed myself. I successfully went on several special missions for my sister while searching for my own desired purchases, dropping off the merchandise with family when my arms became too loaded down with goods.
Despite the chaos, the free-for-all grabfest at the DVD/Blu-Ray displays had its perks. Shoppers often took more than they really wanted, changing their minds while waiting in the hour-plus-long check-out lines. Some abandoned movies and games on random store shelves, and my nephew-in-law Jay Tull and I went up and down the aisles, rummaging through these hidden treasures. Even though I surrendered during the insane movie raid at 10 p.m., I ended up walking out of the store with everything I intended to buy - including the DVDs and Blu-Rays I had missed earlier.
At it 'til 6 a.m.
I'm not sure where the rest of my family went after Walmart, but Jay and I then went to a long line at Target at Monroe Marketplace. We also breezed through Best Buy at 4 a.m., ate breakfast at McDonald's and finished off our shopping experience at Sears at the Susquehanna Valley Mall.
I collapsed into my bed in my Northumberland home at 6 a.m., proud I had found 95 percent of Christmas presents in one shopping trip, and feeling eerily similar to a zombie myself.
Facebook observations
The following Black Friday observations were solicited from our Facebook page:
- Cynthia Gallagher (Elysburg): "You can talk about people who have no souls or conscience, break car windows to steal Christmas presents.... Happened to a friend this am."
- Frani Furca-Ruzicka (Sunbury): "My daughter went to Hershey outlets and Kohls in Harrisburg.... There was a line u had to stand in for awhile..... To get OUT of the store! I'm glad that I stayed home!"
Have your own Black Friday success or horror story? Share it with us on Facebook.
