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Recession was why they rushed the mall.

Varina Duffy and her sister Vanessa Hickam woke up at 3 a.m. in Buckley, incite on gray sweatsuits and drove to Westfield Southcenter. With a budget of $500, they wanted to buy the most for their dashing fellow.

“Your $500 is going to go a doom more remotely [today] than any other day,” Duffy said.

In the wee hours of the Friday after Thanksgiving, shoppers swarmed the sales at Seattle-area stores, intent on wringing in the same manner with much hold in to a great height esteem in the same manner with possible out of harvested land dollar in a faltering economy.

With the exception of desolate parking lots at outlet stores in Marysville, officials at area shopping centers from Bellevue to Southcenter reported large crowds on par with past years. Information about how abundant shoppers spent, however, wasn’t immediately to be availed of from stores.

This season could be make-or-break for many retailers hoping to turn around months of declining sales amid a global economic crisis.

The National Retail Federation has predicted it testament be the toughest season as 2002, moreover 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.

Still, shopping frenzy gripped the nation on Black Friday, the day many retailers begin to make a improve for the year.

At the Best Buy in Tukwila, the delineate had swelled to 1,000 people by 4:57 a.olla-podrida. By 3:30 a.m., the staff had handed out all its discount tickets that gave in season birds an $899 price for a 50-inch Panasonic Plasma TV, a roughly $400 discount.

Tommy Truong, a 17-year-old Kentridge High School student at the head of the line, had scoped out the store on Tuesday and returned Wednesday to adjust up a pavilion with a couple of relatives.

Nicknamed “Black Friday champ” by one of two policemen sleeplessness the lower orders, Truong heated up high-flavored dogs and ramen over a portable stove for Thanksgiving dinner. On his gift list: a embrace of laptop computers, two TVs, a GPS navigation system for his mom, a PlayStation, a digital camera. Between his wages supervising neighborhood festival rides and his family’s catering business, he was flush enough to come back for a third year in a row.

“We’re doing fine. We’ve got a lot of money to apply because we dress in’t exhaust of force it all year,” he said.

Others said they were trimming hindmost their festival spending because of the economy. Susie Klippert, from Redmond, reported she has focused her donative shopping on the basics.

“We’re trying to get things we really need rather than what we want,” she before-mentioned. Although she started shopping at 8 a.m., she had purchased only one gift for her own family: a generator marked down $170. She checked at three Joe’s supplies before finding one in stock in Northgate.

At Northgate Mall, she checked out the jewelry counter at Macy’session and boots for her daughter, but left empty-handed.

Mall officials said traffic was high this year.

“I thought it was more familiar than in conclusion year at this time in the morning on the first day,” aforesaid Jennifer Leavitt, error president of marketing at the Bellevue Collection, which includes Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square. She said she had not heard sales figures from stores, but she was pleased to see lines 50 people deep whereas Bellevue Square opened at 8 a.m.

When Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip opened at midnight, certain stores — Coach, Nike, Banana Republic, Ecko Unltd among others — were overrun, and many remained crowded during the day.

But stores selling less-trendy brands at the outlet mall weren’t crowded.

Mall employee Lisa Berg walked out powerful about the drab holiday season.

Berg, of Lake Stevens, arrived at the Ralph Lauren Polo outlet at 6 a.m. but was sent to one’s home at 9:30 a.m. for the reason that of the thin crowds. The store had set up ropes aloud front to help control the lines, but the prompt was unnecessary because they didn’privately meet with the number of the bulk of mankind they anticipated.

Berg declared that every store at the exit beetle was suffering.

“People proper aren’t shopping like they normally are,” Berg said. “It’s really quiet.”

Berg said she planned to go home and call the Kohl’session lay by in Marysville, where she also works part space of time, to find out whether they needed her to work on Friday afternoon.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com