Black Friday sweeps suburbs

As a full moon cast muted white light on the area's largest mall, throngs of jittery shoppers gathered in front of Woodfield Shopping Center's locked, silver doors.

The digital clocks on their cell phones hit 5 a.m., and a unison cheer erupted. Their boots, slippers and heels hit the Schaumburg mall's well-buffed tile floor. Inside, a remix of "Love Shack" beat over muffled speakers.

For many of these bargain hunters, it was the second or third stop of the morning on Black Friday. They included stylish, preening teens and saggy-eyed parents calculating the better of half off or "Buy One, Get One" deals.

From the mall's third-floor balcony overlooking Santa's throne, you couldn't see the miles of backed-up traffic at the Aurora outlet mall, the tents outside electronic discount stores across the West and Northwest suburbs, or the overflowing parking lots.

In the middle of the blizzard, you couldn't see the damage, only the snow.

Yet, from a plain brown bench overlooking Woodfield's center court, you could hear the people who make up Black Friday and observe the humanity that still lies at the heart of one of the most commercial days in the year.

Teen brothers Ariel and Jay Osilah from Chicago were the first to take a seat.

Jay had been up all night. Ariel got a few hours of sleep. Both had styled hair and fresh clothes. They weren't resting on the bench now, however. They were waiting.

"We are waiting for our mom to get out of J.C. Penny's," Ariel said, sitting back and rolling his eyes.

"And we are waiting for Puma to open," Jay added, pointing to a shoe store.

The lights were on, but the doors wouldn't open until 6 a.m., along with most of the other storefronts in the mall.

Teens were crawling all over Woodfield at this early hour, almost outnumbering the sales-hungry adults.

Arial and Jay soon got tired of waiting and walked off.

Security guards in white shirts milled about, staring over the silver banister at the Starbucks line, tile floors, and maze of ramps and escalators.

The "Love Shack" remix song played in an endless loop and little children rode the glass elevators, waving to parents standing below.

As 6 a.m. ticked closer, 17-year-old Amanda Notaleo sat down. She, too, was waiting.

Notaleo had been shopping for nearly five hours, having hit up the Spring Hill mall in West Dundee at 1 a.m. with about 20 friends. The Elgin native frantically texted to keep tabs on her friends as she waited for Puma to open.

"You really get a head start on the shopping," she said, her eyes quickly going back to her glowing phone. "I want to get it all done today so I don't have to worry about it again."

At 6 a.m., the metal gates and storefront doors opened across the mall, one-by-one.

No one was sitting now.

No time.

More and more people flooded the halls and the overall crowd thickened.

Oddly, many wore black plastic Mickey Mouse ears, even the adults. Teens wore them crooked.

From the third-floor perch, you could see all kinds of people: young couples holding hands, a family all wearing red shirts with the father schlepping along in thick slippers, a middle-aged woman in bright yellow sweat pants topped off with a big blue fanny pack, babies in strollers, children with wandering eyes and small arms tethered to parents.

You heard all kinds of languages: Korean, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Hindi.

Santa was finally settling into his plush chair.

The high-pitched wheezing from a squeeze toy pierced through the mall's murmuring white noise as a photographer tried to get a child on Santa's lap to stop crying.

A herd of teens gathered around the bench, soon moving on toward Abercrombie.

Now it was time to rest.

Carolyn Lupo took a seat and set two red Disney Store bags at her side. They were filled with presents for good nieces and nephews.

"Why do I do this every year?" she said, her eyes staring into the distance.

The Wheeling travel agent was taking a break from shopping with her sisters, who were at Gymboree and Bath & Body Works.

Lupo hadn't found as good of deals as she had hoped for, but the pre-dawn shopping is a tradition for her and her sisters.

Soon she was off again.

Roger Lewis, a 51-year-old with a graying mustache and Mickey Mouse ears on his head, took her place on the bench. He got three hours of sleep and had been at Woodfield since 2 a.m., spending the first three hours in his car while his 16-year-old daughter waited in line at J.C. Penny's.

Lewis had no bags, just a cell phone he continually checked.

"I have a 16-year-old daughter. That's what I'm doing here," the Roselle man said with a laugh. "She wanted to be here with her friend for all the specials. So I drove. I'm not even sure what the deals are. I just took her word for it."

Lewis had wandered the mall for three hours, sipping on coffee and checking his e-mail to see what his daughter had spent on the debit card.

Lewis took the time to explain two oddities of the day.

One: He and thousands of others wore those Mickey Mouse ears because it is part of a sweepstakes. If he is picked by someone in the mall he might win a free trip or cash.

Two: So many teens partake in Black Friday as part of a social thing, not really because they have so many Christmas presents to buy.

"It is a game to them," he said. "It is for the thrill of it."

Next year, he said, his daughter will be driving herself on Black Friday.

The crowds get thicker.

Sue Milliken, a junior high teacher from Mount Prospect, and her eighth-grade daughter, Emma, saddled up on the bench. They sat for nearly 30 minutes facing each other, talking and laughing. A bit of harmony in the chaos.

"We just come to watch the crowd," said Sue with a big smile. "There is a little bit of everybody out here."

The sun finally beamed through the skylights and the crowds continued to shuffle down the halls and into the stores.

The early, crowded shopping scene was repeated at malls across the region.

At Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard, that pre-dawn scene was similar. "Shoppers were parked at 5 a.m. By the time the mall opened, the only available parking was in the outer lots," said Erica Strama, a spokeswoman for Yorktown.

Shoppers also were out in force at the retail strips along Randall Road and throughout the far West suburbs.

Crowds gathered outside Algonquin Commons for stores such as Circuit City, Dick's Sporting Goods and others to open their doors at 5:30 a.m., said Jim Pratt, senior property manager.

"It's amazing how many people are out," he said.

By 11 a.m., several stores in the retail strip were on track to meet their sales goals, contradicting forecasts of holiday slumps, Pratt said.

"I think if the news media would just back off and let people do their shopping, everything would be just fine," he said.

In Huntley, Prime Outlets at I-90 and Route 47 reported a deluge of shoppers. About 98 percent of the center's 52 stores opened at midnight, including several that made or exceeded sales goals by 8 a.m., Prime Outlets general manager Rick Feder said.

"Shoppers had a game plan -- they go to the place with the best deals first," he said.

A blisteringly early 4 a.m. opening for J.C. Penney at Westfield Shoppingtown Hawthorn in Vernon Hills brought in droves of shoppers as well, said Nicole Kneeland-Woods, marketing director for the center.

The shopping center gave coffee and doughnuts to the huddled masses outside the store starting at about 3:30 a.m., she said.

At Gurnee Mills, about 30,000 shoppers were allowed in about a half-hour before the official midnight opening, marketing director Allison Patz said.

Shoppers 100 deep lined up at two GameStops in hopes of getting a Nintendo Wii, while toy trains were a hot seller at KB Toys, she said.

It was the first time Gurnee Mills opened at midnight for Black Friday.

And people began lining up at 4 a.m. outside Randhurst Shopping Center in Mount Prospect, where Carson's opened at 5 a.m., said Tom Castagnoli, Randhurst's general manager.

Overall, business was good Friday, he said. "So far, we're a little busier this year than last year," Castagnoli said.

The shopping experience was a bit more traditional at The Little Traveler in downtown Geneva.

"It was quite busy," co-owner Alvin Rosenthal said. "We had a store full of people."

The mansion on Third Street is a maze of 36 rooms filled with clothing, housewares, jewelry, antiques and more. There are no loss-leader products or 5 a.m. "doorbuster" sales.

"We do not have that pre-Christmas craze where they stand in line," Rosenthal said. "We just do our own thing."