Was that a brawl at the mall? A look back at the shoppers desperate for a holiday deal

Exhausted shoppers napping on mall chairs. The food court pizza restaurant making pies in the middle of the night. Lines wrapping around the big-box stores.

This was the scene at South Florida stores from Thanksgiving through Black Friday in the late-2000s. It seems so long ago.

While malls and stores welcome your business now, many have already started their holiday sales and will be closed on Thursday. And with the pandemic surging again, online shopping takes on a whole new meaning.

Here’s a look back through the Miami Herald archives at the mall frenzies of just a few years ago, when getting the best deal meant being at the store in the middle of the night and fighting through the crowds for the prize.

When shopping becomes a marathon

Published Nov. 29, 2013

Shoppers racing to the finish line of the holiday shopping season had better train for a marathon.

Many major U.S. retailers stayed open for more than 24 hours on Thanksgiving Day through late Black Friday night, and crowds formed early and often over the two days in South Florida and across the nation.

Indeed, this season may mark the year when Thanksgiving was forgotten, and the traditional start of the holiday shopping season transformed into a two-day affair.

Some malls and stores experienced lulls in the action in the early hours of Friday morning. Just a few years ago, 8 a.m. ushered in door-buster mania. But with many retailers opening on Thanksgiving, the Friday morning hours brought quiet at Target, Lowes, Best Buy and The Sports Authority in Hialeah, before business picked up again in the afternoon.

Inside Target, the only line was in the camera department for a $449 Canon T3. Disassembled construction-grade barricades in front of the store were the only signs of the crowds that had swarmed hours earlier.

At the Aventura Mall at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, there seemed to be more employees than customers in many stores. And some mingling customers had spent all night at the mall.

Sisters Claudia and Andrea Gomez, 14 and 13, of North Miami, arrived at 1 a.m. Friday and hit Forever 21, Lids, Hot Topic and American Eagle. They took a pizza break at Sbarro at 4 a.m.

“If we fell asleep, we wouldn’t get up,” said Andrea on her early-early arrival.

Across South Florida, stores and malls opened earlier than ever on Thanksgiving, many by 6 p.m. and nearly all by 8 p.m. Shoppers skipped or delayed their turkey dinners to wait in long lines.

Hundreds of shoppers snaked around Toys “R” Us in South Miami-Dade and Best Buy in Westchester before the stores threw open their doors at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively.

“It’s been steady the whole way through,” said Frank Escobar, Best Buy’s district manager for Miami and Puerto Rico, late Friday afternoon, after the district’s 11 stores in Miami-Dade had been open nearly 24 hours straight. But it’s still too early to tell how the season will shape up, he said.

Walmart in Doral, the chain’s largest-volume store nationwide, reported 18,000 transactions on Thursday, up 36 percent from last year. “Whole families came in,” said Jaime Escalona, the Doral Walmart’s co-manager.

The store stayed open all day on Thanksgiving, and staff had to close the doors at 7:30 p.m. because of the crowds, allowing only a few dozen people to enter at a time, he said. That led to a line with more than 300 people.

On Friday, sales at the store were up 45 percent by 4 p.m., compared to the same time last year, Escalona said. Top sellers were electronics and toys.

At Miami’s Mall of the Americas on Friday afternoon, the biggest draw was electronics giant Tiger Direct.

“I don’t know if my rope is long enough,” said Alfredo Sanchez, an electronics dealer from Maracaibo, Venezuela, as he tried to tie down three 51-inch Samsung televisions on top of his Honda Insight. “The deals weren’t as good as last year,” he said, “but it is still a lot cheaper than in my country.”

Sanchez plans to resell the TVs at a large profit in Venezuela where, he said, the price could fetch more than three times as much.

The check-out lines inside Tiger Direct wound from the front of the store all the way to the back, as the manager scurried to keep everything moving. “This is awesome,” said Roberto Claro, the store manager, who could not say whether sales, so far, were higher than last year.

Those in line looked fatigued, but remained patient.

“We are planning to spend a lot more than last year,” said Patrick Boza, an engineer, who flew from Caracas with his wife at 10 a.m. on Friday, just to come to Tiger Direct. “We are buying as many Garmin Nuvi GPSs as we can get our hands on.” He said he plans to resell his gear when he gets back to Venezuela.

For nearly a decade, Black Friday had been the official start of the shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was originally named Black Friday because it was when retailers turned a profit, or moved out of the red and into the black. Retailers opened early and offered deep discounts.

The busiest time of the holiday season is actually the weekend before Christmas, according to Rick McAllister, chief executive of the Florida Retail Federation. Thanks to a boom in visitors statewide, he predicts a 4.5 percent jump in revenue this holiday season, outpacing the nation.

Yet many in South Florida vowed to stay away from stores and malls on Thanksgiving, in reverence to the holiday and with sympathy for those who had to work.

In other parts of the nation, the Thanksgiving shopping rush sparked incidents of violence. Despite Miami’s passion for shopping, no major incidents seem to have occurred in South Florida.

In Romeoville, Ill., police shot a suspected shoplifter in the shoulder late Thursday night after the car he was driving dragged an officer through the parking lot of a Kohl’s department store.

In Las Vegas, a shopper was shot in the leg during a struggle with thieves who tried to take the TV he had just purchased in a Black Friday sale at Target, as he was carrying it to a nearby apartment complex. A police officer in Rialto, Calif., suffered a fractured hand and finger after responding to an assault in the parking lot of a Walmart just after the sales started Thursday.

And in New Jersey, a Walmart shopper was arrested after becoming belligerent and attacking a police officer inside a store in Garfield, police said. Several officers subdued a 23-year-old suspect and took him to jail. Officers also ticketed a 29-year-old woman who spit on another woman’s child during an argument over infant clothing at the same store, police said.

Those who eschewed stores on Friday found early discounts online. Even that required patience.

Some of the largest retailers’ websites suffered slowdowns due to heavy volume.

Sears’ website was so clogged that shoppers had to wait well over an hour at times to get into the site, as a notice flashed “Our site is super busy, but we’ll get you to Sears.com in just a moment.” To help entertain customers waiting to get on, the site flashed little trivia factoids, like the fact that Canada is the largest exporter of Christmas trees.

Walmart’s site was also a challenge most of the day; it was hit or miss getting past the Black Friday ad in order to search and shop. Target and Best Buy appeared to be trouble free. Many of the websites offered the same deals, if not better, online, along with free shipping and the ability to read customer reviews on their products.

Paypal, which processes 20 percent of all global e-commerce, said Miami was the top city from Thursday through early Friday for mobile purchases.

Overall, Paypal said global mobile payment volume rose 124 percent from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Black Friday, compared to last year.

Cyber Monday promises to bring even more deals after the flurry of weekend sales. In a Visa survey, 34 percent of shoppers plan to buy on Cyber Monday.

“I am monitoring Amazon now for games,” said Bobby Smith, 13, of Miami, who hopes to score a deal on Cyber Monday. “If my parents let me, I want to buy Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty.”

Black Friday frenzy

Published Nov. 26, 2011

Nothing stands between South Florida shoppers and a bargain - not even Thanksgiving dinner and a sleepless night. From Kendall to Sunrise, the Black Friday frenzy kicked off Thursday night when shoppers turned out in full force chasing deals on big-screen televisions, knee-length fashion boots and electronic gaming systems.

While the pace slowed Friday, the spending didn’t stop, as parking lots were packed at Aventura and Dolphin malls, with consumers putting aside any concerns over the economy long enough to open their wallets.

For many, the deals - sometimes offered as early as 9 p.m. Thursday - were worth the sacrifice of an early start, particularly on those high-ticket electronics items that offered the biggest savings.

Matthew Valdes, who had waited with friends since Wednesday morning to get the first spot in line at the Dadeland Station Best Buy, was planning to furnish his new home. On his list: two TVs, as many Blu-ray systems as he could grab, a surround sound home theater system, a digital photo frame and an entire Whirlpool stainless-steel kitchen.

“It’s a wish come true for me because you are getting a whole house for a third of the price,” said Valdes, a 26-year-old public service aide with Miami-Dade police. “What I am going to pay for everything together, that’s going to probably be one refrigerator on a regular day.”

While 2011 is looking up compared to the disappointing holiday seasons during the peak of the recession, caution remains the buzz word among most consumers. The National Retail Federation predicts holiday retail sales will rise 2.8 percent to $465.6 billion. That’s just slightly ahead of the 10-year average holiday sales, but dramatically lower than the 5.2 percent increase retailers saw last year, when they were coming off two years of holiday sales declines.

Shoppers proved they are willing to spend if the price is right. Electronics once again were the hot items, including a 46-inch TV for $298 at Target and a $248 laptop at Walmart, all scooped up in the first few minutes.

“We had three different tablets,” said. Ernesto Agudelo, manager of Kohl’s in Hialeah. “They were all gone in the first 15 minutes.”

The scene was the same Thursday night at Toys R Us in Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines, where $74.99 Android tablets and netbooks went to the first few dozen people in line.

Despite lines stretching several-thousand deep at BrandsMart USA at Sawgrass Mills, shopping was a downright civil experience thanks to retailers’ careful planning. BrandsMart staggered entry, only allowing 100 or so in at a time. Shoppers were able to get in and out quickly, and a near-majority of them lugged out 32-inch HD televisions, priced at $149.88.

“Everything’s been very organized, very smooth,” said Bruce DeSousa, sales manager. “I’ve been through 17 of these and this is one of the best nights yet.”

The scene was dramatically different at Walmart in Doral, where employees made a barricade around the electronics section using carts and stood behind them to reinforce the makeshift wall. Normanick Davis spent three hours waiting in the wrong line. She wanted a PlayStation 3 but ended up in the PlayStation Portable line. By the time she found an employee, the item was sold out. Instead, she bought shirts for her son and left frustrated.

“The whole shopping experience, I did not like,” said Davis, 44, a banker from Nassau. “I’ll never do this again. I can’t take all the hustling, waiting around and people fighting. I saw people fighting over towels.”

After evening openings of Toys R US, BrandsMart, Sawgrass Mills and Dolphin Mall, and slightly later but equally frenzied midnight openings of Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s and Target, Friday’s pre-dawn hours brought a relative lull. But in many stores and malls including Aventura and Dolphin Mall, the crowds picked up again by mid-morning and didn’t slack off throughout the day.

“The lines are back now, so we’re all happy again,” said Tracey Jones, general manager at JCPenney in Aventura, who became concerned when his traffic died down between 6 and 9 a.m.

Late morning Friday brought a last-minute surge at Macy’s and JCPenney in Aventura for doorbuster specials like luggage sets and Barbie dolls. Aventura shoppers also took advantage of morning discounts including 40 percent off the entire store at Express, Banana Republic and American Eagle. Banana Republic employees passed out water and candy to shoppers waiting in the morning line that stretched to the back of the store.

“The bargains are not as good as they were last year,” said Stephanie Guralnick of Miami, who began her shopping trek at Aventura Mall at 6 a.m. “We’re still enjoying ourselves. We do it every year. Usually we’re out before the crowds get here but not this year.”

At midday Friday, Dolphin Mall’s parking lots in west Miami-Dade were completely full and 60 percent of stores were reporting double-digit sales increases compared to last year. Many stores had surpassed last year’s sales volumes by midday, said Karen MacDonald, spokeswoman for Taubman Centers, Dolphin Mall’s owner.

At Dadeland Mall, sales at Macy’s remained brisk throughout the morning, with watches, boots, fur vests, fragrances, anything with glitter and men’s polo shirts among the top sellers.

“People were just in such a good mood; you definitely felt the energy,” said Rhea Brown, district vice president for Macy’s in South Miami-Dade County. “The specials definitely brought people in. They were looking for gifts and also things for themselves.”

For some shoppers, the morning brought Round 2. After a brief nap, Jamie Basilio, of Doral, came to the Hialeah Kohl’s store for a second helping after spending $497 on clothes and jewelry at the midnight sale at Kohl’s in Kendall. He showcased his receipt, the length of a ruler, like a trophy. At the bottom, it read in bold: You Saved $708.47. “On top of that, they gave me a certificate for $135,” he said. “You can’t beat it.”

Black Friday bargain-hunting has long been a sport for savvy shoppers, but this year, it’s a necessity for many.

Amy Skeen estimates she saved hundreds of dollars by leaving Thanksgiving dinner early to get to the opening of Toys R Us before heading to Target and Walmart.

“It makes a big difference with three kids,” said Skeen, 36, a Pompano Beach mother. “I have to plan and compare all the prices. We still have to be wise with our spending.”

Fistfights for the killer deal

Published Nov. 23, 2008

Every year you see the photos and the videos - the pushing, the fistfights, the masses plowing past store clerks just to get that killer deal. Well, Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving extravaganza that beckons bargain hunters nationwide -- will soon be b-a-a-a-ck.

You know you wanna go but is it worth the hassle?

After years of witnessing the madness from behind the lens as a newspaper photographer or from behind a shopping cart, I’m here to share some tips with you.

I’ll never forget my first Black Friday at the Wal-Mart on Northwest 57th Street. Lines and lines of shoppers huddled behind carts that snaked around the building. Some were sitting on the ground asleep.

As I started taking pictures, I learned that for many, this is a yearly tradition. “Why?”I asked. They all shrugged their shoulders and laughed.

“It’s just fun,” one woman told me.

“It gets me into the Christmas spirit,” said another. “I get all my shopping done in one day.”

I heard jokes and laughter coming from up and down the line and came to the conclusion that it’s a bonding experience. Only the truly insane would venture out at 4 a.m. to be a part of this frenzy.

I also learned that you really do save money and if you’re smart, you can save a lot. The best part is that by 11 a.m., you can be back home asleep and finished with your holiday shopping.

So for you newbies who are thinking about venturing into this vortex, I’ve put together a guide to help you keep your sanity and the elbows of fellow shoppers out of your face.

1. It’s the economy, stupid. As a rule of thumb, the worse the economy, the better the deals.

A sneak peek at a few ads hasn’t shown me the killer deals that I witnessed post-9/11, but I can tell you it will probably be worth it to get out of bed.

2. Fuhgettaboutit. Forget about getting those $300 laptops - these are for people who do not have a life. They didn’t spend Thursday cooking turkeys, washing dishes and refereeing fights between Aunt Polly and Uncle Ned.

While you’re cutting into that juicy drumstick, they’re sitting on a cold concrete slab outside a big-box store, texting anyone and everyone in their address book. Usually there are limited quantities of these killer deals so you don’t have a prayer. This is a job for the pros and battle-hardened veterans. Let it go, let it go.

3. Reconnaissance is key. You must do your homework. Make a list of what you need, then go over the fliers to see which stores offer the best deals. Stick to the list! Sometimes you can get a sneak preview of the fliers online. Sites such as Blackfridayads.com, gottadeal.com or Black-Friday.net leak out the specials days in advance -- but you can’t always be sure they are accurate.

4. Plan and prioritize. Different stores open at different times, with the hours getting earlier every year. This year some start at 4 a.m., more at 5 a.m. and others throughout the morning. Plot a course that takes advantage of the staggered starts. Keep in mind that the best deals, the doorbusters, are available for only a few hours.

Best Buy only lets in a certain number of customers at a time so you can really get bogged down there just trying to get into the store.

Target’s deals usually last all day so you can hit it later.

A new twist is that a few places such as Sawgrass Mills and the KB Toys in Davie’s Tower Shops are opening at midnight.

5. Go before you go. Bringing a cup of coffee or bottle of water is a good idea but be sure to use the restroom before heading out. Not all stores will let you use their facilities before they open and you don’t want to be waiting in line, hopping on one foot.

Stopping for anything is for weenies. It slows you down and costs money. No peeing before 9 a.m.!

6. Best friends are forever. The people next to you in line are your new BFFs. Strike up conversations and ask what they’re going to buy. You don’t want to miss a killer deal on a new bike or that MP3 player. Plus, you never know when you’ll need a buddy to hold your place in line while you go back to fetch the flier you left in the car.

Standing outside a Best Buy at 4 a.m. can bring out the camaraderie and holiday cheer among the masses. It can also bring out the claws and the fangs. Stay away from the Scrooges.

7. Ask and you shall receive. Usually there are a few store clerks standing outside for crowd control. Ask them in advance where the items you want are located. That way you won’t waste time meandering around while the pros race past you. In 2006, I grabbed the last two Gameboys on the shelf because I knew right where they were.

8. This is not project runway. Leave the Manolos at home. You’re going to wait in line, your feet will hurt and you’ll want to outrun the competition. Keds are de rigueur.

9. No personal fouls. Never push and shove. So what if everyone else is doing it, that doesn’t mean you have to. It’s not worth it and you won’t hate yourself in the evening.

10. Location, location location. The Best Buy in Aventura usually has shorter lines than the one at Dadeland Station. Midtown’s Circuit City had almost no lines when it first opened, so keep on the lookout for newer stores that may not be on anyone’s radar. BrandsMart takes Black Friday to a whole new level. My husband once saw two elderly men start a fistfight over a parking space.

The crowds can be huge and they’re not for the faint of heart. Get there early, hunker down and talk to no one.

Find the stores that aren’t as highly trafficked. My husband’s favorite is the Radio Shack at 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. Twice he has slept in, leisurely strolled into the store at 9 a.m. and still found his favorite doorbusters. Plus, he says, “I got outstanding service.”

11. ‘Tis the season to give back. Take advantage of the great deals and pick up a doll or truck for those holiday toy drives.

The savings on this day make it easy to share. I once saw a school teacher dragging a huge bag full of Barbies that went for $2 to $3 each.

“For my students,” she told me. I peeked in the bag and sure enough, they were the real deal. Lucky kids.

12. The magic of online shopping. If you’re the type that is too prissy to jostle with hundreds of others, then you too, can still be part of the madness. Some stores will allow you to order their doorbusters online. Then you’ll only have millions of cybershoppers to compete with for that special price. But hey, at least you get to wear your PJs.

I’ve taught you everything I know.

Now go forth, be of good cheer, and conquer. And when you’re standing out there at 4 a.m. saying, “What was I thinking?” be very, very grateful. In the Northeast they stand outside in the sleet and snow.

Happy shopping!

- Nuri Vallbona