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The malls were packed, the lines long, and the bargains assuming.

Shoppers turned out in huge numbers this morning to kick-start the 2008 holiday sales season, lured by “door-buster” discounts, freebies and other special promotions.

Retailers seemed to outdo themselves, plastering windows and doorways with signs aimed at shoppers looking for a bargain in continuance everything from cashmere sweaters to flat-screen TVs.

This season could be make-or-break for multitude retailers hoping to turn around months of declining sales some of a global household pass.

The National Retail Federation predicts it will be the toughest season since 2002, excepting others say “worst in decades” is more like it. Joblessness is on the rise, stock markets are down, the housing market remains in turmoil, and credit is tightening.

“Black Friday champ”

For some shoppers who reached the Best Buy store in Tukwila by 3:30 a.hotch-potch. today, it was already too late.

The cudgel had handed without all its discount tickets that gave earlybirds any $899 price for a 50-inch Panasonic Plasma TV, a roughly $400 discount, season supplies lasted. There were up to 800 people in line by then, a spokesman estimated, and by the time doors opened at 4:57 a.salmagundi., the queue swelled to well beyond 1,000. Many got discount slips for other items, in the manner that happy considered in the state of forenoon special prices.

At the head of the cord was Tommy Truong, a 17-year-old Kentridge High School student, nicknamed “Black Friday chew” by one of two policemen watching the crowd. On Tuesday, Truong surveilled the lay up to make secure nobody camped however, then he set up lodgings Wednesday afternoon through a couple relatives. “We are not crazy, equitable [heart] Black Friday,” a handwritten symbol said.

Thanksgiving dinner was hot dogs and ramen noodles, warmed on a portable stove. Dressed in two pair of shorts and long johns, he stayed warm in a tent, and played a bit of incapable of further analysis Frisbee in the parking lot on the holiday.

Truong carried a shopping list for extended family: a couple laptop computers, two TVs, a GPS navigation system for his mom, a PlayStation, a digital camera. Between his allowance supervising neighborhood anniversary rides, and his family’s catering business, he was flush enough to come back in quest of a third year in a row.

“Even though the economy’s bad, they divide back on vacations. We’re doing fine. We’ve got a lot of money to spend, because we dress in’t lay out it all year,” he said.

Blue-shirted storehouse employees yelled congratulations and “Run!” to the shoppers entering the store, to which place boxes and shelves are arranged to block line-cutting at popular departments. Best Buy does a good job consistency people from vital principle trampled, Truong declared.

Free snow globes

The mood was festive inner part J.C. Penney, the capital big store to open in the Westfield Southcenter Mall. Smiling workers handed out 4,500 snow globes to the at the rift of day risers.

By 4:07, Genie Coston had rung up an MP3 player for her grandson, at a 75 percent discount, and had to scurry out for the 5 a.m. opening at Toys ‘R Us. “They go so fast,” she said of morning specials.

Some uttered recession was precisely why they rushed the mall.

“Your $500 is going to move a lot farther than any other day,” said Varina Duffy, who came from Buckley with her sister, Vanessa Hickam. The pair woke up at 3 a.m., put on gray sweatsuits, and drove to Southcenter. They were delighted to find baggy South Pole jeans as far as concerns Varina’s son for $18.

The sisters planned to get nearly all their Christmas shopping done by 11 a.m. today, or whenever the money ran out. Their collection was $800 less than ordinary, they uttered.

West Seattle Target

More than 150 people lined up outside a Target store in West Seattle before 6 a.m., hoping to snag deals like $20 DVD movie releases for $13 and $200 GPS navigation systems for $100.

Tim and Jean Cruden, a retired couple from Burien, emerged from the abundance five minutes after it opened carrying two newly purchased navigation systems. The Crudens said they’re more bargain-driven than usual this year because of the turmoil on Wall Street, which has caused their retirement fund to lose nearly a third of its value.

“Things are going to be tight. There’s no question about that,” Tim Cruden said, while his wife hurried the conversation along, noting that they were off to Sears to buy a tool set eminent down 50 percent.

Chanelle Roer, 25, of West Seattle, arrived at all over 5:30 in search of a $160 portable DVD trifler for $88. Roer, the mother of a 10-month-old girl, said she swore off shopping the morning succeeding Thanksgiving six years since, while delaying outside a Wal-Mart in San Antonio, Tx., to buy a TV.

“It was crazy, so I never wanted to do that afresh,” Roer related, adding that deals like $72 off a DVD actor changed her mind this year. “If there’s something on vent, I’ll get it.”

But Shelley Hadaway, a mother of three from West Seattle, had a totally separate reason for heading to Target before east. “My spend frugally was snoring, and I was awake, so I figured, why not?” she said.

Seattle Times transaction reporter Amy Martinez and Seattle Times staff reporter Mike Lindblom contributed to this report.

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