Black Friday Bust: Local Media Reports Lack of Long Lines at Retail Stores

by Adan Salazar

Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC

 

Shoppers in America typically line up outside stores on the day after Thanksgiving attempting to save cash with doorbuster sales in a tradition known as Black Friday.

This year, however, as documented by several local news outlets, there appears to be a lack of shoppers.

NBC Bay Area observed the lack of lines outside of a Best Buy electronics store located in the Pleasant Hill suburb.

“Brace yourselves, Black Friday as we know it is gone,” anchor Janelle Wang pointed out.

“Gone are the days of going after the Thanksgiving meal, spending all night, all morning, hopping from one store to the next store to the next. Instead, there’s a lot of this,” she said, showing footage of vast, empty storefront parking lots.

“Tonight. Empty parking lots, dark store fronts and no one,” she added.

Reporting outside a desolate Best Buy store, NBC correspondent Cheryl Hurd remarked Black Friday used to be “a traditional starting point for holiday shoppers.”

“But in 2022 it doesn’t look the same. The lines forming outside stores like Best Buy are not there.”

One shopper lamented, “I just really miss being in those lines and everybody getting inside once those doors open up. Now everything’s just kind of different.”

The local media outlet did not paint the lack of shoppers as an indication of the US economy’s dire condition, but rather claimed the lines are missing due to more people shopping online.

A similar phenomenon was seen in Cleveland, Ohio, where local ABC affiliate WEWS-TV documented an eerie lack of customers inside a Best Buy location.

A local Fox affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri, also noted “things look different on the eve of Black Friday this year.”

“We’ve been out here for several hours and we’ve only run into one person,” reported KTVI’s Mallory Thomas.

“They’ve got the barricades out here, but there’s no shoppers,” Thomas noted also standing in a vacant Best Buy parking lot.

“The days of sleeping off your Thanksgiving meal in a tent and waiting in long lines for doorbuster deals are long gone,” she stated.

“I see nothing,” commented shopper Jeremy Pritchett. “I’m surprised. Normally it’s wrapped all around the building, today no one.”

Far from mentioning shoppers are spooked by the Biden administration’s mishandling of the economy, which has sent inflation skyrocketing, Fox 2 also claimed it’s because more people are shopping online.

“We’ve got a Walmart, Macy’s and then we’ve got a Best Buy further down. It would typically be a hot spot for Black Friday shoppers, but there’s no one here,” Thomas reported.

“We also made our way over to the Chesterfield Premium Outlets and it looks very similar over there. It’s an empty parking lot. Just security is in the parking lot,” she added.

While the traditional shopping holiday is back in some cities, it’s clear the past two years of lockdowns and pandemic fearmongering by the ruling class, in addition to the Biden admin’s decimation of the US economy in the form of inflation and the ongoing recession, have taken a devastating toll on Americans’ wallets, indiscriminate spending and consumer confidence.