- Times Leader

First Posted:

WILKES-BARRE TWP. — Rearrange your calendar. The turkey and cranberry sauce will have to wait.

“Black Friday is now Black Thursday,” said Cassie Zapotocky.

Stores in Northeastern Pennsylvania joined retailers around the country Thursday in opening their doors extra early for shoppers seeking Black Friday deals.

The Zapotocky clan of White Haven said Thursday they pushed back their Thanksgiving celebration a day in order to take advantage of early-bird Black Friday deals. Their first stop was hhgregg, where the family said they waited four hours in the cold to get their hands on a 50-inch television.

John Zapotocky implied a visit to the Wyoming Valley Mall, which opened at 6 p.m., was also on the family agenda. Shopping on Friday, he said, was not. Instead, that’s when the Zapotockys plan to sit down for a family feast.

When doors opened at 4 p.m., they were near the front of the line, with only one man ahead of them.

Wilfredo Hernandez of Nanticoke said he’d been waiting outside since about 10 a.m. His TV broke, he said, and combined with store credit, the deal on a 65-inch, high definition smart TV was well-worth the cold.

But in the quest for big-screen-TV-greatness Mohamed Abuelhawa of Pringle had Hernandez and the Zapotockys beat by at least two hours. Give or take a day.

Abuelhawa camped outside of Best Buy from 8 a.m. Wednesday until the big-box electronics retailer opened at 5 p.m. Thursday. Undeterred by the Thanksgiving-eve snowstorm, some friends joined along the way, sleeping in tents pitched on the sidewalk. They completed their concrete campsite with a firepit.

“It was actually not that bad,” said Travis Cox of Forty Fort. “The tent helped with the wind a lot.”

Less helpful, he said, were the drivers honking early-morning wakeup calls at the campers.

Near the end of the wait, as fire supplies were running low, the campers began improvising to keep warm, burning shirts, pay stubs, coupons, a library card and, according to one camper, their dignity.

Not every shopper Thursday night was looking to score a new television. Keri Klimchok of Hanover Township confessed more modest shopping goals.

“It’s always nice to get boots for $17.99,” she said. “It’s always hard to find good shoes and purses.”

Browsing discounted handbags at Boscov’s on South Main Street 15-minutes after the store opened, Klimchok had already made one purchase and didn’t seem to be having much trouble plotting a second.

Black Friday deals continue today in stores everywhere, with Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday to follow.