Black Friday 2017: Online Glitches, a Run on Sneakers and Waiting for a Dogs Age

The unofficial start of the holiday shopping season was this week, when many national retailers opened their doors and offered major sales. Now it’s Black Friday, traditionally the big day. We’re capturing what it looks and feels like at American shopping malls, retailers and discount stores.

Here, you’ll also find:

• Sneaker sales in Los Angeles, sparse crowds in Dallas, and a dogsitter on Long Island.

• Online outages throw a glitch into a big ecommerce day.

• Shopping deals from The Wirecutter, a product review and recommendation site owned by The New York Times.

Sneakers worth waiting for.

In front of Cool Kicks, a sneaker boutique on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, Jonathan Lindsey reclined in a lawn chair, hoodie drawn snug over a custom fitted cap. About 100 people waited in a line behind him Thursday night, stretching around the corner.

Mr. Lindsey, 28, said there were around 15 people ahead of him when he arrived at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving night — 12 hours before the store would open. But he paid $60 dollars to move up to second. Like most of the people near the front of the line, he was here not for personal shopping, but for business.

So the Gray Zebra Yeezy Boosts he was there to buy would never grace Mr. Lindsey’s feet. Instead, he had sold the pair in advance to a woman who had driven by earlier in a Mercedes, offering him $550 dollars for a pair that would cost him $320.

“She had her son on FaceTime,” Mr. Lindsey recalled. “She’s like, ‘His birthday is tomorrow, and he wants the shoes.’ They’re sold. Baby boy’s birthday. They’re sold.”

Though patrons would be limited to buying just one pair each — with some pairs marked down to just a dollar, only one of the first 15 people in line at Cool Kicks was planning on keeping his purchase. The rest — mostly teenagers, and all male but one — would be immediately relisting their new rare sneakers on the secondary market, where some pairs fetch more than $1,000. — LOUIS KEENE

Not a good day for ‘Our Website Is Down.’

Friday is on track to become perhaps the busiest day in history for online shopping, according to salesforce.com, an enterprise software maker, which makes it a spectacularly bad time for a retailer’s website to go on the fritz.

But as shoppers pour into e-commerce, pushing online revenue on Thanksgiving to what Adobe’s digital marketing research arm described as a record of $2.87 billion, many companies are struggling to accommodate the surge in traffic.

Many customers trying to access the online Black Friday deals offered by Lowe’s — up to 40 percent off certain appliances, half-priced power tools and more — instead encountered glitches that caused the site to fail mid-purchase or struggle to load at all.

A spokeswoman for the home improvement chain said the increase in site visits was “causing some intermittent outages” and said that the company was “working diligently” to restore full functionality.

Last year, both Macy’s and Express had to soothe Black Friday customers enraged by technical difficulties with the brands’ websites.

The global reach of e-commerce has inspired many international companies to participate in the post-Thanksgiving shopping event. Several of them also experienced website crashes on Friday.

Takealot.com, a general goods e-commerce retailer based in South Africa, apologized to shoppers for site-wide problems, saying in a Twitter post that “ a fundamental service within our platform has failed.”

Hudson’s Bay, a Canadian department store chain, spent much of the morning on Twitter responding to customer complaints of website problems.

— TIFFANY HSU

They’ve been shopping for a dog’s age.

Scooter the Puggle and Freckle the Bichon mix, their heads protected by red hats with ear flaps, waited patiently in a stroller across from Nathan’s at the Tanger outlets in Deer Park, N.Y. Manning the stroller was Leonard Heide, 63, of Merrick, who also sat patiently in wait.

“My wife and son are shopping in the Christmas Tree shop,” Mr. Heide said. “And all around.”

They’re shopping for “anything and everything,” laughed Mr. Heide; and their store tour started early. The family stopped by Home Depot in Freeport at 8 a.m. before heading to the outlet center.

“We do it every year,” Mr. Heide said.

Mr. Heide’s wife and son shopped Thanksgiving night, too, from 8 until midnight.

“Me and the boys stayed home,” he said. — ARIELLE DOLLINGER

What crowds? Empty stretches in Dallas.

In a clear sign that online sales and Thanksgiving Day openings have taken a bite out of Black Friday, many Dallas stores had no morning crowds at all. Numerous retailers on the city’s busy Highway 75 opened early only to find 10, five or even just one customer waiting outside.

Luiza Behs, 15, of Tulsa, Okla., went to the Apple Store an hour before it opened to beat the line, but there was no line. She, her mother, her friend and one other customer were the only people waiting.

“There’s no lines so that’s good for me,” Ms. Behs said with a smile.

Trina, a 46-year-old Dallas woman who did not want to give her last name, went to Target with her son before it opened and found no one there.

“We laughed about it because we said, ‘We could just wait in the car,’” she said, waiting for the door to be unlocked.

Perhaps people were just sleeping later this year. Rather than rise hours before dawn, Americans on average slept in longer on Friday than they did a week earlier, according to data from the Sleep Cycle snooze-tracking app. And when they eventually woke up, residents of most states were in a better mood than when they got out of bed last Friday.

Ryan Marlar, 26, of Garland, was the only person sitting outside Dick’s Sporting Goods waiting for the store to open at 5 a.m. With plans to buy ammunition on sale, Mr. Marlar sat on the tailgate of his truck and said he expected to see at least a few other people waiting to get in.

“It’s my favorite holiday of the year. You know exactly what you want,” he said. “I’m only saving like 10 bucks, but it’s the spirit of the thing. I always go and do it.” — PATRICK MCGEE

The Wirecutter will help you navigate the day.

Our colleagues over at Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews products, have a running list of Black Friday deals on everything from trash cans to cameras to artificial Christmas trees.

The best part is you don’t have to get out of your chair to chase them down.

There are suggestions at every price point, so it’s a good resource if you’re buying for a gift exchange at work or a loved one. After all, somebody in your life must need a kayak.

What Brings You Out?

We asked shoppers around the country what drew them to stores over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

NAME: John Kaikis Jr.

AGE: 58

LOCATION: Louisville, Ky.

WHY DO YOU COME TO A STORE INSTEAD OF SHOPPING ONLINE?

“We like to look at things and hold them in our hands. That way we know exactly what we’re buying.”

DO YOU COME FOR PRACTICAL REASONS, OR FOR THE EXPERIENCE?

“We just kind of do it to have fun. Because I was way hung over this morning, and I sure didn’t need to be up this early. But it’s fun. It’s a tradition we’ve been doing now for 14 years. And afterwards, we’ll go out for mimosas, so that’s a bonus.”

WHAT’S THE PRODUCT YOU’LL RUN TO FIRST?

TV and laptop.

— SARAH KELLEY

NAME: Scott Miller

AGE: 44

LOCATION: Manchester, Iowa

WHY DO YOU COME TO A STORE INSTEAD OF SHOPPING ONLINE?

“I don’t have internet.”

DO YOU COME FOR PRACTICAL REASONS, OR FOR THE EXPERIENCE?

“For the deals.”

WHAT’S THE PRODUCT YOU’LL RUN TO FIRST?

43-inch Vizio Class 1080p TV for $198

— CHRISTINA CAPECCHI

TVs here, bathroom there.

“Is this the line for TVs?”

“Do you have any more Toshibas?”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Those are the three questions Austin Reed is prepared to answer hundreds of times on Friday. “I’m the TV guy and the bathroom guy,” joked Mr. Reed, 24, who is stationed in the home electronics section of a Best Buy in East Louisville, Ky. — right next to the restroom.

This is his third day on the job. “It’s been a little overwhelming,” he said. “Imagine like a siege of a castle. It’s like that.”

Mr. Reed was hired as part of Best Buy’s Geek Squad computer tech support team, but televisions are today’s hot sale item, hence his temporary post.

Black Friday shoppers began lining up outside the store at 11:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Minutes before the store opened at 8 a.m., an employee distributed tickets to those planning to purchase the most promoted deal of the day: a Toshiba 55-inch LED television, on sale for $279.99 — $220 less than its usual list price.

A white-haired man wearing a flannel hunting cap with ear flaps approached Mr. Reed and asked where he could find a set as he pointed to an ad on a store circular. The sales associate broke the news that all the Toshibas had been claimed. “Well, I guess I’m a day late and a dollar short,” the man said.

On cue, Mr. Reed responded, “But we have lots more deals.” — SARAH KELLEY