‘I’m here because I’m insane’: Black Friday shoppers line up for hours in Columbia

No doubt some of you were napping Thursday afternoon, sleeping off a food coma induced by a Thanksgiving Day feast.

Others of you — and you know who you are — were out on the battlefield, getting ahead of the Black Friday shoppers with a plan in place and list in hand. You had scoured the sales papers and websites of national department store chains, combed our Black Friday guide, made note of opening times, the biggest sales and cleaned out the car (so your new purchases would fit).

Although traffic was light on Thanksgiving Day, we found early bird shoppers lined up in the Harbison area, where a concentration of stores such as Target, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Walmart, Belk and Columbiana Centre mall offered holiday deals and discounts.

The people at the front of the line at Kohl’s had been there for three hours. While they weren’t looking for anything specific on sale, they were hoping to score big with Kohl’s cash where for every $50 you spend, you get $15 back in store coupons to spend at a later date.

Outside the entrance to Belk, about 200 shoppers lined up to wait for the store’s 4 p.m. opening.

“I’m here because I’m insane,” said Martha Miller. She said she was in Columbia visiting friends who wanted to get out and shop and couldn’t bear for them to go it alone.

More than one person in the Belk line hoped to be the lucky winner of a $1,000 gift card. The store, like other big name department stores, was also offering doorbuster sales and giveaways to lure early shoppers.

Over at Target, people were lining up an hour before the 6 p.m. opening. Shoppers were looking for deals on just about everything, from big screen TVs to Hatchimals Glittering Garden toy animals.