Business & Tech

Early Birds Flock to Black Friday Sales

Excitement, experience and sales draw shoppers to South Hills Village.

Linda Book arrived at South Hills Village at 3:30 a.m. with a plan. By 4:45 a.m., she had the shopping bags to prove her plan was working.

“We’re here to get the best buys of the season,” Book said. “(The stores) have regular sales, which is great, but we want the really good ones.”

She and her nieces, Maria and Amanda, all of Whitehall, admitted that Black Friday shopping is a little crazy.

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But it’s also fun, they said. It’s a challenge to get the best deals – and they insisted it’s well worth it. The family was pretty pleased with the sales they found, mainly at clothing stores.

They weren’t the only early birds to flock to the mall at a time when some people are just crawling into bed, and others have been asleep for hours.

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Lindsey Stoyanoff and her sister Brittany, of Baldwin, arrived at the mall at 4:30 a.m.  By 6:30 a.m., they were browsing through the Pittsburgh Steelers Sideline Store. For Lindsey, this is her first Black Friday experience.

“I wanted to come for the experience and for the deals,” she said around 6:30 a.m. “I love it.”

Her sister, who shopped on Black Friday last year, wasn’t quite as enthusiastic.

“I like it, but Lindsey’s more excited than I am,” she said. “I like it more for the experience than the actual shopping.”

The girls planned to shop for a couple more hours, they said, and then go home and probably take a nap.

The Stoyanoff sisters chose to get up early, but there were other shoppers who hadn’t gone to sleep yet.

Jordan Benson and Kara Krepley of Dormont decided to stay awake after Thanksgiving dinner so they could get to the mall as early as possible. At 7:30 a.m., they’d already been shopping for several hours.

“I don’t think we really had a reason to come out,” Krepley said. “We just wanted to come out and see what was going on.”


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