Black Friday Chicago Style

Image by stevendepolo via Flickr

Black Friday is upon us and there’s an unending thirst for discounts, door busters and deals, both online or in stores. But with all the focus on national chains I’m left wondering if this could be the final nail in the coffin for the smaller, local retailers that make our communities special.

I’ve been covering national big box retailers for nearly 15 years now and the vast number of discounted items expected this year is astonishing. Retailers like Walmart, Target, Sears, Best Buy and Toys R Us are so aggressive, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the near daily announcements.

For the uninitiated, Black Friday got its name as the day when retailers would shift from being in the red for the year to the black. A lot of this is no longer true, especially for mass merchants, but at many smaller shops, more than half of all sales are done in roughly the last six weeks of the year. And that’s in a normal year when times are good. This is anything but a normal year.

Independent retail stores are endangered and all store closings and commercial vacancies are adding to the ghost town feel of once thriving neighborhoods. I think a good message this year more than ever, is to shop locally.

If you’re the type who plans to shop Black Friday sales, there are some area listings and aggregators to check out. North Shore and Chicago magazines are tracking deals locally. Suburban malls are offering gift cards to early arrivals while places like Abt Electronics have Black Friday deals on higher end branded merchandise than a lot of national chains.

Looking beyond the before dawn Black Friday deals, consider throwing some cash to area merchants, getting out of the mall and onto neighborhood streets. Nearly every community has a chamber of commerce tasked with decorating, hosting and promoting shopping areas and events. Most weekends, from now until Christmas, you can stroll a prettily lit street, sip complementary hot beverages and purchase gifts either made locally or hand selected by independent retailer.

Keep tabs on shopping events in the Chicago Reader, Metromix or Chicago Magazine. Or just pick a neighborhood you’d like to wander, check the Web site for its chamber of commerce and head out. My favorite, Andersonville, hosts a festival of lights, evening events and will even reimburse parking with a $20 purchase at area shops.