| Black Friday Shopping Underwhelming; Decorating Popular |
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| by Tim W. Jackson | |
 Several shoppers at the Wal-Mart in Dublin left the store empty-handed or with only a couple of bags on Friday afternoon Click to Enlarge Reports of long lines and heavy morning traffic around Blacksburg’s First & Main, which celebrated its grand opening, were an anomaly compared to the NRV shopping scene in general, as retail stores gave way to sparse shopping attendance later in the day. In scoping area stores in Dublin, Pulaski, Fairlawn, and Radford Friday between about 2 and 3:30 p.m., parking lots were no  Christmas tree shopping, such as at Vaughn's Nursery in Dublin, seemed brisk on Friday afternoon Click to Enlarge Traffic seemed relatively light for such a typically busy shopping day, but one common sight was vehicles with Christmas trees strapped on their tops. With the temperate weather, it seems many people decided to spend the afternoon putting up holiday decorations rather than hit the stores. In fact, many houses passed had scenes of people on ladders putting up lights and creating holiday scenes in yards. Certainly some did get out and take advantage of the Black Friday sales, though. Newbern resident Kristin Edwards said she participated in Black Friday shopping for the first time ever. “I had so much fun, but did not brave Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. like many others,” she said.Giles County resident Rhonda McCroskey actually went north for her Black Friday shopping—not all the way to the North Pole, just to West Virginia where she hit stores such as JCPenney, Belk, Christopher & Banks, Maurice’s, Big Lots, and even Cracker Barrel. McCroskey said today’s Black Friday experience “not as bad as in years past. People were actually nice!” The social networking site Facebook had various competing factions pulling potential shoppers one way or the other. Downtown Merchants of Blacksburg, for instance, created an “event” called “Holiday Gift Shopping in Downtown Blacksburg.” The event had 120 confirmed guests as of late Friday afternoon while 647 reported they would not be attending.Perhaps many of those not attending were instead part of “Buy Nothing Day,” a global anti-consumer effort on Facebook, which encouraged would-be shoppers to avoid the consumer chaos.  Shopping at the Lowe's in Fairlawn was no busier on the afternoon of Black Friday than on a typical Saturday Click to Enlarge Mattson said she does at least 75 percent of her holiday shopping online. “I'll go into the booming metropolis of Floyd to pick out a tree with my kids and later tonight,” Mattson said, “and I'll be popping popcorn to string for the tree and surfing the 'net for my online purchases”
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