Bargain prices and good weather attract shopping crowds

The downtown Seattle shopping district around Westlake Center pulsed with activity: shoppers, many of them hunting for bargains, ducked in and out of stores. Children lined up for Santa photos. Parade-spectators jammed the sidewalks.

Sydney Scott and her daughter Paloma White awoke at 4 a.m. so they could take the ferry from Vashon Island to Seattle, hoping to get in some shopping before the Macy's Holiday parade began.

Last year they had gotten up too late to see the parade. This year, 7-year-old Paloma wanted to avoid a repeat and was sure to get her mother up on time. "It's nice to see the parade and all the bands," she said. "And it's a lot of fun shopping with my mom."

Scott, her Macy's bag stuffed with purchases, said the early morning shopping and parade ritual "kicks off the holiday season nicely."

Real, diehard shoppers, she said, don't mind the early hour. "It puts you in the Christmas spirit," she said.

The door-buster bargains don't hurt either. At Macy's, she and Paloma found a winter coat at almost one-third off the original price.

"You see all the time on TV how nasty some people can get during holiday shopping," said Scott, who moved to Washington from California four years ago. "Everybody was really nice. At one point we were in the elevator with about 20 other people and I said, "lets all sing."

"Everybody started singing. It was amazing that people could get into the spirit at that hour."

Ruth Natalia and Mia Kartia, sisters who live in Belltown, were at Macy's by 6 a.m. when the store opened – a stretch for the women who usually consider today a day to sleep in.

They found the day-after-Thanksgiving ads and commercials enticing, and said they were among a group of friends who spent the night together at the Belltown apartment so they could wake up early for shopping. "I tried last year but it didn't quite work for me," Kartia said.

The two said they weren't shopping for specific Christmas gifts, but any kind of bargain they could find, "mostly winter clothes, jackets," Natalia said.

Outside E B Games store at the Westlake Center, about 15 customers, many hoping for a chance to buy a copy of Nintendo's hot new Wii game system, were lined up even before the store opened at 8 a.m.

E B Games had only two of the popular systems available.

Kuren Charles of Ballard said he'd sneaked into the mall through an employee entrance when he arrived at 6 a.m., but was promptly kicked out by mall staff.

He wanted a game controller, but those also weren't available. "I have a party on Friday and I really gotta have that," he said.

Terri Pearson who moved to California from Seattle a few years ago, said she planned to spend the day downtown with her sister. They planned to shop — for nothing in particular — and have lunch and possibly catch a movie.

When she lived in Seattle before, she had a home on Queen Anne and would always shop downtown, she said.

"It's totally the downtown experience," she said. "I really miss that."

It is that same kind of experience that brought Jennifer Barden and her family from Covington to downtown early today.

Barden, her parents, husband and two sons got a hotel room downtown and planned to watch the parade, shop and catch the holiday tree lighting in the evening.

Spending the day and night after Thanksgiving downtown has been a family tradition since she was a kid and it's one she's now introducing to her sons, 7 and 9.

"We were here last year when it poured; we were drenched after the parade," she said.

"Tomorrow we'll stand in line to get Santa pictures. It's really not Christmas if you've not come downtown to shop. The chaos of downtown. It's the kind of experience you can't get anywhere else."

Down Fourth and up Fifth avenues and along Pine and Pike streets, opening hours at malls and shops were staggered. Nordstrom opened at 7 a.m., for example, while Westlake Center opened at 8 a.m. Pacific Place didn't open until 10 a.m.

Pacific Place spokeswoman Lynn Beck said mall officials find that much of the foot traffic doesn't come until after the parade.

"That's worked well for us in the past," Beck said. "Most of our retailers don't do early bird specials."

Kent Station's inaugural season

At Kent Station, Christmas carols were blaring from the speakers and strings of 5,000 lights were placed atop the buildings to signal to locals that they have a new shopping destination.

People from around south King County came out on a cold and windy day to check out the 14-movie screen megaplex, 12 restaurants and cafes, and the three dozen shops, while children rode the carousel and played with a shopper dressed as Santa Claus.

"We want to create an atmosphere where people can build a (Christmas) tradition on," said John Hinds, general manager of Kent Station. "It's a big day for us. We are giving shoppers in the south King County area another option as opposed to driving to the (Seattle) malls.

Gerald Freeman, a King County Metro driver, was speed shopping during his 36-minute break from driving his bus route.

"My 15-year old son wants Playstation 3, and my 11-year-old wants the new Wii. Good thing I only have two kids. Eleven minutes left," said the Federal Way father as he dashed off.

Amanda Miller, 18, was shopping for a coat, not just any coat, but one that could stand up to the Chicago winter. She is a performing art student at Roosevelt University in the Windy City.

"It's freezing over there," said the Kent native who was home for the holidays.

Nearby, Jessica Ward was also shopping for a coat for "somebody who has lost like six coats a year," she said, staring at her 8- year-old daughter Destiny who was hopping along the sidewalk.

Packed but not a mess

MARYSVILLE — Around noon, shoppers flooded into the Seattle Premium Outlets at Quil Ceda village. Though stores were packed, there seemed to be enough parking for everyone, and there weren't big backups of vehicles trying to get off Interstate 5 and into the retail area.

Inside the outlet stores, shoppers snatched up sale items and, in places, waited in long lines to pay for their goods.

Bargain prices attract a crowd

LYNWOOD — Hundreds of people lined up outside the Wal-Mart before the doors opened at 5 this morning to take advantage of the advertised deals.

Vickie Stewart was hoping to buy a 52-inch TV for $474. But from her place in line — about a hundred cold and anxious shoppers from the entrance — her chances didn't look good.

"We were here late," she said. Stewart arrived outside the Wal-Mart at 4:15 a.m.

Other shoppers lined up to get an early start to their one and only day of holiday shopping.

Aimee Cox, who stood near Stewart, said she'll be done with all her holiday shopping by 10 this morning. She planned to hit Target and Toys-R-Us after shopping at Wal-Mart.

Her husband wasn't far away, waiting in line for the 5 a.m. Best Buy opening, she said.

"Our husbands take their time; we go in, get what we want and leave," she said.

A couple shoppers, among the first in line at the Wal-Mart, emerged from the store about 10 minutes after it opened with the 52-inch TV only to realize it wouldn't fit in their van.

After some lifting, angling and help from a Wal-Mart employee, the shoppers took the TV out of its box and disassembled it. Only then they were able to squeeze it into the vehicle.

At the Best Buy a couple of miles away, there was still a line nearly 40 minutes after the doors opened.

Jesse Rosen had been in line since 7 p.m. Thursday for a chance to buy a $1,000, 42-inch TV.

"I thought about going home 20 times," he said. He'd been planning to stay at the Best Buy all night for the past three days after learning about the deal on the Web site Slickdeals.net.

It was worth it, though, Rosen said. The store ran out of the TVs, but Best Buy will ship him his $1,000 TV, he said. Consumers expected to spend more this year

The retail industry expects consumers to spend less freely this year after enduring small, steady sacrifices, including rising interest rates and sharply fluctuating gas prices.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecast holiday sales to grow 5 percent to $457.4 billion during the last two months of the year. By comparison, holiday sales last year rose by 6.1 percent.

While the day after Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday-shopping season, many retailers have begun their holiday-shopping promotions early.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, launched its most aggressive holiday-pricing campaign ever in early November. Chief rival Target followed suit, indicating it would compete on long-running discounts -- a move good for price-conscious consumers, but bad for company profits.

Web traffic swamps sites

For much of this morning, attempts to open Walmart.com resulted blank pages, delays or other problems. By early afternoon, visitors were simply told to come back later.

Walmart.com spokeswoman Amy Colella blamed a "higher than anticipated traffic surge."

Amazon.com also reported problems.

The site was disrupted for about 15 minutes, starting at about 2 p.m. EST Thursday, as the retailer was offering Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console to the first 1,000 customers for $100, $200 below the regular retail price.

"We saw dramatically more traffic than what we anticipated," Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman said today.

The Xbox sold out in 29 seconds, Berman said. Amazon also sold out of discounted Mongoose mountain bikes, Barbie dolls and Amazon Prime memberships with $100 gift certificates in about 15 minutes.

Strong but not the biggest

For Thanksgiving weekend, retailers expect to see roughly 137 million shoppers, according to a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the NRF. While it's perhaps the most widely touted shopping day of the season, it's not the busiest. That distinction is reserved for the Saturday before Christmas.

Millions of people are also expected to shop online starting this weekend. The Monday after Thanksgiving, also known as "Cyber Monday," is expected to be one of the year's biggest online holiday shopping days, as people return to work and shop online using their office computers.

Off the mall grid

Despite Christmas décor and inviting shop windows, today was no busier than a typical weekend at many independent boutiques and gift shops.

"We're not as busy as the malls, because they have the sales and promotions," said Gail Bradley, co-owner of Frame Up Studios in Fremont.

The holiday bustle at her frame and gift shop begins with an annual holiday party the first Friday of December and kicks into high gear during the two weeks before Christmas, when "it's all heads in here," Bradley said, gesturing to the mostly empty space that will be filled with people.

Her shop's holiday cheer includes a tabletop Christmas tree that captivated 3-year-old Karl Bergenham of Seattle.

"I'm going to the toys," he proclaimed, and his mother, Crystal Rutherford, explained that he was looking forward to visiting Top Ten Toys on N. 85th St. later in the day.

• • •

Tanner and Owen Schmidt, ages 8 and 5, checked out the selection at Clover, a toy and children's clothing and furnishings store in Ballard.

After a morning of bowling and lunch with their parents and grandmother, Tanner played on a miniature xylophone and said he might make a wish list for Santa, or not, while Owen hid behind his father's coat.

Clover's owner, Sarah Furstenberg, said a lot of people are just looking.

She overheard one mother suggest that her child "e-mail Santa that you're interested in that."

This year at Clover, kids are gravitating toward castles and costumes and the ever-popular stuffed animals, which are a hit with boys and girls until they reach puberty.

"Kids always want stuffed animals, and moms never want to buy them," she said. "But the kids want to cover their beds with stuffed animals, with just a thin strip to sleep on."

• • •

Like a lot of independent shops, Jackson Street Books got a slow start to the holiday-shopping season with just a couple customers waiting outside for its 10:30 a.m. opening.

Last December was the store's best month since it opened in February 2004, and owners Dan and Tammy Domike hope this holiday season will be even better.

For one thing, they are advertising this year.

For another, more people have discovered where they are, tucked into a quiet corner of a strip mall in the Central District.

The day-after-Thanksgiving shopping madness wasn't going to trickle down to their shop, Dan Domike said. "A lot of people are at malls because of the breadth of things they can get there."

The sales staff at Impulse, a clothing boutique in Fremont, said they weren't worried about a lull in the stream of shoppers on Friday afternoon.

They had seen some new faces earlier in the day, mostly people looking for gift ideas.

Plus, the shop has its steady customers.

"We have a solid customer base," said Katie Nash. "Their loved ones know to come here for them."

Northgate parking painless

Northgate Mall offered evidence that nothing – not even construction and detours in the parking lot – deters shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving.

The oldest shopping mall in the city is undergoing an expansion, which translates to about 1,450 fewer places to park around the perimeter of the mall this holiday season vs. last. To alleviate the parking stress, Northgate officials opened a 550-space shuttle lot across Northeast 103rd Street, near Metro's transit center.

Much of the construction is taking place on the west (or freeway) side of the mall. For much of the summer and fall, that lot was a construction zone, shut down entirely as underground utilities were being installed. But portions of that lot have been repaved and reopened, just in time for the holiday- shopping season.

At noon Friday, there were surprisingly plenty of empty spaces available in the west lot (the Nordstrom side). The east lot (the Macy's side) was filled up, however.

"It wasn't too bad," said Coral Endler, of Edmonds, who parked on the west lot. "Parking on that side is better now than it has been over the past few months, that's for sure."

Donna Crosland of North Seattle said she found loads of parking in front of Nordstrom when she arrived at the mall at about 11 a.m.

"We were very shocked," she said, adding that construction wasn't going to keep her from shopping at Northgate. "It's my favorite mall."

Seattle Times reporters Monica Soto, Manuel Valdes, Lornet Turnbull, Brian Alexander, Melissa Allison and Stuart Eskenazi contributed to this report. This report includes information from The Associated Press.