Black Friday in warmer climates.

I have participated in the craziness of Black Friday for the last few years because it's... well... crazy. You get up early, stand in line in the cold, when the doors open you run in, buy your stuff, rush out, drive to the next place and do it again. You fill up your car with $600 to $1200 worth of stuff, and then drive home and fill out the rebate slips and end up with a huge pile of semi-useful stuff for less than $99 after rebates. Most of it would be given away to people during the year. I was free of this newfound obsession this year because I no longer have a place to store all of the junk.

Well it turns out that in areas of the country that don't have frigid weather, things are even crazier. We had heard that people start camping out at closing time on Wednesday.
So on Thanksgiving day on our way to Dee and Rick's place for dinner I drove through the Best Buy parking lot. Sure enough, there was a long line of tents. These two pictures were taken 17 hours before the store was scheduled to open on Friday morning. Best Buy now brings in Porta-Jons because of the lessons learned after the first year.






Many stores have now started offering the exact same deals online to avoid the crush.
By the way, that Friday is called "Black Friday" because for some stores, it is the symbolic first day of making a profit (or getting in the black).