PINEVILLE, NC – More than 500 shoppers lined up at the doors of Best Buy this morning for their chance at Black Friday savings. Some had been there since 8pm last night.

At 5am, the gates opened with a whoop, a holler and a dash from the first in line.

As the consumers filed in, the local TV newscaster gal rehearsed her report. She mentioned an incident at the Carolina Place Mall. The radio said a scuffle started in the mall’s food court when a few shoppers tried to jump the line. Several days ago, a man bought a PS3 from this Best Buy location and was followed home by two men who robbed him at gunpoint on his doorstep.

In the Best Buy parking lot, some shoppers forwent the line, opting instead to wait in their cars. Others stood across from the store’s doors, waiting for the line wrapping around the building to die down, clutching circulars advertising the savings lying inside the concrete walls. — BEN POPKEN

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