Shoppers, from left, Tanya Arriola, Linda Arriola and Joey Solis reach the checkout at a Mervyns to make their purchases on "Black Friday," the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season. Lines at the Mervyns were converging from opposite sides of the store. Photo by John Gurzinski.
Shoppers file in and out of a store Friday at Fashion Show mall, which benefited from new pedestrian bridges to Strip resorts. Photo by Ralph Fountain.
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Some fought through heavy traffic. Others fought the guy next in line.
Regardless of their opponent, innumerable locals and visitors on Friday began a lively pre-Christmas shopping onslaught at stores throughout the Las Vegas Valley.
Armed with cell phones and credit cards, dog-eared advertising fliers and a sometimes exhaustible supply of patience, customers seeking early morning bargains or that oh-so-perfect holiday gift received a warm welcome from eager retailers.
"It's usually fun to go shopping today," said Henderson resident Barbara Amway, who set out to shop at 8 a.m. alongside her husband, Paul.
"You can get half-price on a lot of popular items, so this way our child can get more for Christmas," she added.
By noon, the Amways had visited Kmart, a Michaels arts and crafts store, as well as Toys "R" Us, where they bought Hot Wheels play sets for their 4-year-old son, Dylan.
A trip to Costco would follow, Paul Amway added, with another stop at Wal-Mart if time permitted.
Barbara Amway hoped to avoid problems similar to a brawl she witnessed at Costco earlier this week.
Some disgruntled shoppers became violent when they failed to land a coveted Xbox 360 video game console. She feared similar disruptions could occur Friday if people were carried away in a holiday buying frenzy.
That's apparently what happened at multiple area Wal-Mart stores, according to a Las Vegas Police Department dispatcher who confirmed officers responded to several early morning incidents at the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer's local stores.
Lt. Sean Donnelly confirmed two officers intervened when an unknown number of customers began fighting sometime before 7 a.m. at the Wal-Mart at 4505 W. Charleston Blvd. The incident occurred before Donnelly's shift, so he was uncertain how many arrests were made.
Store representatives wouldn't comment.
Things also got out of hand at a Wal-Mart store in Orlando, Fla., where a man who cut in line to get a discounted laptop computer was wrestled to the ground, according to a video shown by an ABC affiliate, WFTV-TV.
"Some people can be ruthless," said Las Vegas shopper Adrienne Woolstenhulme, who once witnessed another day-after-Thanksgiving shopper bite a women when fighting over an item at a store in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Since then, Woolstenhulme's family has jokingly referred to Black Friday's best bargains as "bitin' good deals." And they, too, bit off plenty this year.
Daughters Pauline, 18, and Savanna, 14, unsuccessfully urged their mother, aunt and cousins to hit the malls at 5 a.m. A group of eight family members instead left home at the late hour of 7 a.m. By 10, they were on their way back to drop off bags full of shoes and clothing -- and pick up two others who opted for sleep over sales.
"We're in vacation shopping mode," said Kirsten Hardcastle, who is Adrienne Woolstenhulme's sister-in-law.
"If I were at home, I'd probably have other responsibilities today like cleaning up the house. But here, we're bargain hunters," said Hardcastle, who lives in Bountiful, Utah.
Shoppers were lined up outside when the Mervyns store at Henderson's Galleria at Sunset opened at 5 a.m., said manager Rebecca Gatewood.
Although some items could be had for up to 70 percent off their usual price, Gatewood said business was "really orderly" as workers struggled to keep products on shelves and move shoppers quickly through checkout lines.
On an unseasonably warm day after Thanksgiving, jackets were unnecessary. But shoppers frequently chatted on cell phones to compare items shown in Thursday's advertising fliers with what was actually left over on store shelves.
Fry's Electronics opened its doors at 5 a.m., with some of its best bargains limited to the day's first four business hours.
Anxious shoppers quickly turned out. By 9:30, vehicles lining up to enter the parking lot caused a minor traffic snarl near the intersection of the Las Vegas Beltway and Las Vegas Boulevard South. Dozens instead parked in a desert lot to the east, which led some overly eager individuals to dodge speeding vehicles rather than wait at a nearby crosswalk.
Las Vegas resident Candace Baca and boyfriend Adam Fisher opted not to play human "Frogger," though they did spend 40 minutes in line to buy a digital camera and some car stereo equipment. Both said the day's deals made any delays worthwhile.
Others apparently agreed, as evidenced by the armada of crammed shopping carts seen exiting the store.
Just outside Fry's entrance, one family awaited a truck to carry away their three 44-inch Panasonic high-definition television sets -- a $997 Friday-only special that sold-out before 10 a.m. -- as well as a boxed home surround sound system and two Brother fax machines.
At the Target store near Sunset Road and Stephanie Street, checkout lines extended nearly 50 yards down a main aisle and into an adjacent girls' clothing section.
Crowds were heaviest in the home electronics and toy departments, where one employee pushed a dolly loaded with hundreds of board games intended to restock the shelves. Shoppers plucked games from the stack before the cart could be unloaded.
Art Elliott owns Bang & Olufsen, an upscale electronics store at Fashion Show mall. He said customer traffic ebbed and flowed early Friday, though this year's early holiday business has benefited from April's debut of the nearby Wynn Las Vegas.
The $2.7 billion megaresort attracts well-heeled visitors to Fashion Show and lures locals who park at the mall before crossing the Strip to check out the city's newest hotel-casino, he said.
"This is the first Christmas we've had the pedestrian bridges" linking Fashion Show with Wynn Las Vegas and Treasure Island, Elliott said. "I think that's brought a lot more people in."
Most importantly, Elliott added, Friday's clientele was "not short tempered."
In an improving but still challenging economy, merchants seemed to be even more aggressive in wooing the big crowds from a year ago, luring them with such come-ons as free money in the form of gift cards. For the first time, Macy's, a division of Federated Department Stores Inc., was giving away a total of $1 million in gift cards to early bird shoppers. Some retailers, like J.C. Penney Co. and Wal-Mart, threw open their doors earlier in a bid to keep them shopping longer in their stores.
Based on early reports from some retail executives, traffic and buying appeared more robust than last year, but stores need customers to keep buying throughout the season.
"To me, it looks like more traffic than what we have seen," said Terry Lundgren, chairman, president and CEO of Federated, who was walking the floors of Macy's Herald Square in New York, which attracted 1,000 customers to its doors for the 6 a.m. opening. "I have also seen a lot of bags."
Hot items were cashmere sweaters, down comforters and scarves, at up to 60 percent off, he said.
"Today, things look really good. But these next five weeks are really critical," Lundgren added. "You have to wait and see how it unfolds."
