KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. — Thanksgiving Day dawned at Kanawha County’s Best Buy with a line already forming in cold temperatures for the store’s planned 5 p.m. Thursday opening ahead of Black Friday.
“We were thinking, ‘We hope we’re going to get a TV,'” said Angela Bourne from Calhoun County who left home with her best friend, Flisha Poling, before 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning.
It was their first wait for Black Friday bargains.
“We’ve never done the whole ‘camp out, wait in line’ thing in 20 degree weather,” Bourne said as she and Poling shivered.
“We showed up and we didn’t have anything. We saw people here with chairs and blankets and so I stood in line and she ran to Walmart and got us some chairs and hand and foot warmers and a blanket and some toboggans.”
They both wanted one of the Best Buy holiday doorbusters — a Sharp 50″ LED 4K Ultra HD television that usually sells for $499.99 and was listed at $179.99 on Thursday night in Best Buy stores only.
Everyone else in the Best Buy line as of 8 a.m. Thursday was after the same thing.
Under a blanket nearby was Robert York from Putnam County who got in the line around 2 a.m. Thursday.
“It’s just a really good deal for a 4K TV. We’re probably never going to see it again until they pretty much become obsolete,” he said.
In front of him was Danny Young from Elkview. “I’ve got to have the latest and greatest,” he said.
Sitting in Spot No. 1 was C.J. Parsley from Charleston alongside his girlfriend, Brittany Tittle. They set up in line around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday before Best Buy closed on the day before Thanksgiving.
“We came out here early and we beat the crowd,” Parsley told MetroNews.
It was Tittle’s first holiday wait for deals. Her advice for future shoppers was to “bring lots of blankets, layers, hand warmers, hot chocolate.”
Parsley admitted they had thought about leaving “multiple times.”
“Probably around the 2 or 3 a.m. mark, probably when it was getting really cold, but we’re going to stick it out. We’ve gone this far,” he said.
In the end, Parsley predicted it would be worth the wait. “This time it is, maybe not so much next year,” he said.
Most larger retailers and many mall sites throughout West Virginia were planning to be open by Thursday night with additional hours, deals and other special events planned through Friday.