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Shoppers ring in holidays

By Chris Fuchs

“I've been here since 4:30,” Bauer said. “We opened at 5 in the morning. The line was all the way back to the Barnes and Noble. Forget about it.”

Although consumer activity at other name-brand stores like the Gap, Old Navy and Structure gradually picked up as the day wore on, the clerks at Kay-Bee spent all morning, afternoon and night shepherding a steady river of parents into and out of the store – parents on a mission to find the perfect Christmas gift for their children.

The nation's retailers ring up between a third and a half of their annual revenues during the holiday shopping season, and the Friday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest buying day of the year as shopkeepers use discounts to lure customers.

This year, Bauer said, the popular items on wish lists are Teknopuppy, Poo-chi Dog and Holiday Barbie. The Teknopuppy and Poo-chi Dog – robotic walking and talking “bundles of electronic puppy personality,” as one website put it – cost between $30 and $40. Holiday Barbie, the signature doll clad in a long, flowing, gilded dress, goes for about $30.

Whether you arrived at Kay-Bee at 5 a.m. or 11 a.m. this year, it didn't matter much – unless you were looking for one of those highly coveted gift items – since anyone who spent $200 or more was given a $50 gift certificate. This enticement was being billed simply as “The Early Bird Special.”

Most of the parents waiting on a long but fast-moving line in Kay-Bee Friday morning, like Valerie D'Arco and Ken Flanagan, couldn't fathom waking up at dawn to begin their shopping quest. Still, they all found what they had come for, despite having to wade through isle after isle knee-deep with boxes of toys.

In the back of the store, though, Sheila Dowd was having a bit more trouble than the other parents. She would pick up a box, read the bolded print and set it back on the shelf. “I am looking for something appropriate for a 1-year-old,” she said. Trouble is, she could only find toys suitable for ages 1 1/2 and older.

Before noon, the Gap and Structure, also in the shopping center, were not yet bustling with business. Lloyd Evans, the manager of Structure, was standing near the entranceway with another employee, looking antsy.

“All I can expect is that business is going to be good today, being that it is Black Friday and all,” he said, referring to the critical kickoff of the Christmas selling season.

The atmosphere at the Barnes and Noble, a few stores down from KayBees, was much more sedate than at any other store. The scent of Starbucks coffee hung zestfully in the air like a fat, aromatic cloud. But off in the corner of the store, a commotion was brewing – five people were wrapping gifts, soliciting donations and trying to get customers to adopt a homeless pet.

“Barnes and Noble lets us set up here and we do the book wrapping,” said Patrice Kraus, a representative of SAVE, a group that shelters stray pets until they find a home for them. “People buy their books, they come over, we wrap them and then we explain what we do. You never know, maybe we can make a match, someone could fall in love with one of them.”

If the Bay Terrace Shopping Center wasn't as active Friday morning as one might have expected, then the College Point megastores on 20th Avenue in Whitestone were picking up the slack. By 12:30 p.m., cars on the 20th Avenue exit ramp off the Whitestone Expressway were beginning to back up all the way into the right-hand lane of the expressway.

“We went to the store already at 6 o'clock in the morning,” shouted one woman from her jeep, as she waited for a fleet of cars to turn onto a congested 20th Avenue. “We shopped in New Jersey and we got everything we wanted.”

At the Old Navy, one of many outlets in the complex, the check-out line was nearly 50 people deep. On a day that could bring out the irascible side of the most patient of people, everyone seemed immovably calm, though. They knew this was the price of getting the good buys.

Lorraine Zaboklicki had the misfortune of being at the end of that line. Still, she managed to fire off a machine-gun laugh when asked why she came. “You get good bargains today,” she said. But strangely, she said, “I wasn't looking for anything. As a matter of fact, I am bringing something back.”

Hindsight told her that she probably should have waited a week or two, when it might be a little less crowded. She couldn't resist, though. She was in the neighborhood.

Over in Jamaica, all day long, buses and cars sparred with knots of shoppers weaving in and out of traffic. The commercial vein of downtown Jamaica – Jamaica Avenue between 162nd and 168th streets – saw a unrelenting flow of customers snake their way from store to store Friday, all searching for the best buys on name-brand items.