Pasco malls draw serious shoppers

Lisa Westerman got her first taste of Black Friday 2009 shortly after midnight when she got to Toys R Us at The Grove at Wesley Chapel shopping center.

"It was packed," Westerman said. "It was horrible. You couldn't move. Everything was gone by the time I got there."

At one point, store managers shut the doors, letting new shoppers in only as others left.

After a while, Westerman called retreat and went home to Dade City to rest. A few hours later, she was back at it, surveying a pile of portable DVD players standing in the aisle at SuperTarget, where toys and electronics were the hot tickets.

At 7:30 a.m., the crowd was so thick in the electronics department, the store's pharmacist was drafted to help out. Shoppers lined up seven deep, their carts filled with games and digital picture frames, to check out.

Stacey Bandy of Brooksville missed her chance for a digital picture frame, one of this season's most coveted items.

"That's what I really wanted," she said.

Central Pasco's shopping venues - many of them marking their second or third Black Friday - drew shoppers from far and wide eager to strike a bargain.

At the Shops at Wiregrass, anchor stores JC Penney, Macy's and Dillard's opened in the wee hours when the night owls crossed paths with the early birds.

Sisters Jen and Mitchie Michael were among those hitting the mall well before dawn.

"Four a.m. was JC Penney for clothes. Five a.m. was Macy's for pots and pans," Jen Michael said as family members loaded their latest haul into their cars and headed back for more.

"It's not as packed as it was last year," Jen Michael said of the crowds.

Outside Macy's, the sidewalks of Pasco's newest mall, which opened in October 2008, were sparsely populated in the chilly morning air. As the morning wore on and the weather warmed, more people began filling the open-air mall.

Bandy hit Wiregrass with her mother, Terri Goudy of New Port Richey, and sister-in-law, Kelly Goudy of New Port Richey. By 9 a.m., four hours after they set out, the trio had made the rounds of the major shopping venues. They even braved the mob at Toys R Us.

"We made it out alive," Terri Goudy said with a laugh while traversing the sidewalks at Wiregrass. "We almost got hit twice just going through the parking lot."

Despite the mad rush at some stores, others were quiet. Jewelry stores where lonely places as shoppers focused on $3 DVDs and $50 breadmakers elsewhere. A newly opened Brookstone store at Wiregrass - so new the floor was still unfinished concrete - had for customers just two teen-age boys testing out the massage chairs.

Nearby, Wendy and John Worrell of Wesley Chapel peered through the window of Williams-Sonoma, which remained steadfastly closed until 9 a.m., despite the people gathering outside.

The Worrells noted the thinner-than-expected crowds during the morning at Wiregrass. The weather might be one culprit, they said. But there could have been another, Wendy said.

"We're missing a sale we don't know about," she said.

The crowd at Bath & Body Works at Wiregrass tried the patience of Rebekah Potter, who walked out empty-handed. Friday's shopping safari drew Potter, her mother, Jeanne Potter, and family friend

Susan Duprez all the way from Floral City in Citrus County for the day.

Like other Black Friday veterans, they had their own war stories to tell.

"Best Buy was its own animal," Duprez said. The trio arrived there to find hundreds of people waiting in line for the store to open. Some of them spent the night in tents.

The women had taken time after Thanksgiving dinner to plot their Black Friday strategy. They left home at 2 a.m. bound for Old Navy at University Mall in Tampa then worked their way back north.

"We're not here to browse," Rebekah Potter said.