Paul Fitzpatrick: London 2024

Like me I assume you are currently being bombarded with ‘Black Friday’ offers…. in your mailbox, via tv, radio, podcasts and on every high street across the land, there is literally no escape.

The term ‘Black Friday’ was originally coined to describe a financial crisis in 1869 that caused a stock market crash in America.
Basically a couple of greedy bankers and an industrialists tried to manipulate the price of gold. Their plans were uncovered by the US government who released more gold into the market which caused gold prices to plummet. This thwarted the rascals plans but brought about months of financial devastation for the US economy.

The term resurfaced when it was adopted by US retailers in the 50s to describe the day after Thanksgiving when staff called in sick, however, Black Friday as we know it stems from the 80s when US retailers identified Black Friday as the day their businesses shifted from operating at a loss (‘in the red’) to finally operating at profit (‘in the black’).

Here in the UK we have Amazon to thank for Black Friday, they introduced it to the nation in 2010, it had such an effect that it crashed their site and they/we haven’t looked back since.

I had no knowledge of the commercial aspect of Black Friday until Amazon terrorised me into making buying decisions a month earlier than I was used to (yup, I was a perennial Xmas eve shopper and proud of it).
However, I did know a bit about the original 1869 Black Friday, not by being a diligent History or Economics student but through Steely Dan who educated me via their imaginatively titled song – ‘Black Friday’
I think it was the opening line that grabbed my attention…..

“When Black Friday Comes
I Stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
dive from the fourteenth floor”

As Ian MacDonald the renowned music journalist said… “Crassness is contagious. Fortunately, so is intelligence – which is why listening to Steely Dan is good for you”

It looks like we’ll be stuck with Amazon’s Black Friday concept for the foreseeable future.

Changed days indeed for us Boomers, pre-Xmas deals were unheard of in the 70s where we were expected to pay top dollar until the sales kicked in on the 2nd of January.

I remember passing the queue at Arnotts department store on Argyle St in Glasgow one perishing January morning shortly before opening time, and one of my pals was right at the front of the queue, he’d camped out overnight on a mission to get a fancy new tv at a fraction of the normal price.
In those days, big stores would advertise a few sensational deals to get people’s attention but in reality they’d only have one or two in stock at the super-low price so you had to get in quick, and my pal Hugh was quicker than the rest.

Retailers were canny back then and weren’t restricted by all the fair trading laws imposed upon them now.

I learned the hard way, I remember Arnotts advertising a mid-season sale of half-price Wrangler jeans when I was 14.
In our neck of the woods Wrangler were the de facto jeans before Levis, so this deal seemed too good to be true.

The sale, or event as it was called, was scheduled to start on a Saturday morning and I remember standing outside the store in eager anticipation with about a 50 other ‘half-shut-knives’ who had the same idea as me. As the doors opened we poured inside in our droves to find a table of neatly piled jeans facing us, two minutes later the table looked like a bomb had hit it, but no one was making their way to the till.

The reason for this distinct lack of purchasing activity was simple – the jeans on the table were all missing the one thing that we’d got out our beds at an unearthly hour for… the iconic Wrangler leather patch on the back pocket.

They’d been removed, along with the famous yellow cowboy pocket plaster… no branding meant no buying!

You see none of us had noticed the small print strategically tucked away at the bottom of Arnotts sneaky advert…. ‘these jeans are irregulars’.

In these commercialised times, Black Friday has grown arms and legs and is no longer focused on the Friday after Thanksgiving, it lasts for about a month now and is a magnet for scams, fake products and fake reviews, but who doesn’t suffer from a bit of FOMO?

So, that’s me off now to see what I can find amongst the multiple Black Friday deals, I may even find a pair of genuine Wrangler jeans…. with the labels attached!