Fun fact: the term "Black Friday" was originally used by retail workers
To describe the utter hellscape that was having to work the day after Thanksgiving. I feel like it's become less of a hoorahrah than it was during/immediately after the Great Recession.
Not that it didn't always exist in concept--I'm old enough to remember people being shoved into glass display cases over the last Cabbage Patch Kid*--but it seemed to get especially intense during the naughts and early teens of the 21st century. That was when you'd see stories about people camping in line for days to get a deal on a flatscreen TV, and the day came with a literal body count.
I think trying to extend it into Thanksgiving itself, which big box stores attempted to brand as "Grey Thursday" and which went over about as well as Gretchen Wieners trying to make "fetch" happen--was what started the backlash. WaPo actually had a story last week about how almost none of them are still doing that, and most that gave a comment on the story made a point of saying this was a permanent decision.
I'm spending the day doing nothing, which is my usual MO. Sometimes I'll go somewhere to photograph something, but most years I don't even do that because I'd still have to drive through Lafayette at a minimum. There's a pair of abandoned houses in Hammond that are on my list, but to get there I'd have to drive directly past the biggest mall in the entire North Shore area. So maybe I'll try to get to them during one of the days off I have the week before Christmas.
I did do some online shopping, getting some books for Rian and for the Secret Santa book exchange a friend of mine does on Facebook. And I decided to get the Sam Wo Restaurant print. Y'all were right, the tea garden print is pretty, but the night scene is much more interesting and transporting. Plus it feels like kind of a deeper cut; like even people who've never been to San Francisco know about the Japanese tea garden, but Sam Wo is more of a local thing. Although they do have a Wikipedia page, so maybe it's more famous than I realized.
*I got one for the Easter after that Christmas, because my mother couldn't find one at Christmas. The funny thing is, I didn't even want one and hadn't asked for one. I thought they were ugly, and I hated the way their bodies were soft and shapeless but their heads hard molded plastic. And my entire life I've known I didn't want kids, so the concept of the dolls, that this was your child that you adopted and now had to care for, was particularly unappealing.
Not that it didn't always exist in concept--I'm old enough to remember people being shoved into glass display cases over the last Cabbage Patch Kid*--but it seemed to get especially intense during the naughts and early teens of the 21st century. That was when you'd see stories about people camping in line for days to get a deal on a flatscreen TV, and the day came with a literal body count.
I think trying to extend it into Thanksgiving itself, which big box stores attempted to brand as "Grey Thursday" and which went over about as well as Gretchen Wieners trying to make "fetch" happen--was what started the backlash. WaPo actually had a story last week about how almost none of them are still doing that, and most that gave a comment on the story made a point of saying this was a permanent decision.
Click to viewI'm spending the day doing nothing, which is my usual MO. Sometimes I'll go somewhere to photograph something, but most years I don't even do that because I'd still have to drive through Lafayette at a minimum. There's a pair of abandoned houses in Hammond that are on my list, but to get there I'd have to drive directly past the biggest mall in the entire North Shore area. So maybe I'll try to get to them during one of the days off I have the week before Christmas.
I did do some online shopping, getting some books for Rian and for the Secret Santa book exchange a friend of mine does on Facebook. And I decided to get the Sam Wo Restaurant print. Y'all were right, the tea garden print is pretty, but the night scene is much more interesting and transporting. Plus it feels like kind of a deeper cut; like even people who've never been to San Francisco know about the Japanese tea garden, but Sam Wo is more of a local thing. Although they do have a Wikipedia page, so maybe it's more famous than I realized.
*I got one for the Easter after that Christmas, because my mother couldn't find one at Christmas. The funny thing is, I didn't even want one and hadn't asked for one. I thought they were ugly, and I hated the way their bodies were soft and shapeless but their heads hard molded plastic. And my entire life I've known I didn't want kids, so the concept of the dolls, that this was your child that you adopted and now had to care for, was particularly unappealing.