MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Snubbing the mad dash for deals is a luxury”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, November 25, 2012
Attention, affluent shoppers: Pre-dawn sales are for the little people! You don’t need a $179 flat screen that bad!
Did you notice who woke up at 4 in the morning and rushed out to the mall? I didn’t take my own scientific survey. But not too many millionaires were busting down the doors at Kmart and giving Black Friday interviews.
No one pulled a firearm at Swarovski. That was at a Sears in Texas. No shots were fired outside Neiman Marcus. That was at Walmart in Florida.
Here on the Great American Bargain Hunt, we’ve always had mixed feeling about our own mad scramble for cheap. All of us hate to pay more than we have to. Yet most of us also think of ourselves as people who will occasionally splurge.
The Spectrem Group, a consulting firm that tracks the spending habits of the wealthy, caused a stir at week’s end with its own survey of the Black Friday clientele. The most interesting conclusion: Eighty-three percent of Americans with $1 million or more in investable assets wouldn’t be shopping at all.
They’re too busy AND too rich.
Apparently, they’d sooner snub their own doormen and caddies than hover outside a Target in the early-morning dew.
“This group is more oriented toward quality and value rather than price,” declared George Walper, Spectrem’s president.
And where were the one-day door-buster blowouts high-priced automobiles and luxury homes? The really good stuff rarely goes on sale.
That just may be the hidden message inside this preholiday shopping hysteria:
Enjoy a bargain if you need one — just not too much.
WHY-DAY
1. Sappy Saturday
2. Not-so-super Sunday
3. Maxed-out Monday
4. Take-it-all-back Tuesday
5. We-got-suckered Wednesday
THE NEWS IN SONG
Reverend Billy and the Church of
Life After Shopping (Bill Talen)
“Shopocalypse”
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
How do Jets fans feel now, driving all that way to Jersey, getting stomped on AND missing Grandma’s pumpkin pie?…Tax bill or utility bill? Where will they hide the cost of repairing our Sandy-ravaged grid?…Who says LI Craigslist is only for escorts and hookups? “I have several seal boxes of 10 Twinkies each,” 
wrote one poster. “I am willing to trade them for some good beer.”…Any Sandy-swamped fire department in need of a second-hand tanker truck? Southampton FD Chip Pierson is in a generous mood…How many LI “turkey trotters” are now asking themselves: Shouldn’t I have run AFTER that gluttonous meal?…You thought Mercy Medical Center was a hospital? Can’t it also be an insta-dorm for out-of-state Sandy workers, camping just off the ER?…Should Latino loser Mitt Romney have paid more attention to Suffolk County, where Steve Bellone’s welcome mat has now replaced Steve Levy’s cold shoulder?…Where did all the red crossbills suddenly come from? Bird watchers are giddy, Hecksher State Park to Jones Beach…With all the gross stuff Northport students l
eave in their lockers, how can a single Suffolk police dog possibly sniff a small bag of pot?…How many Port Jeff Village residents were distraught to hear that five new parking meters were lost in the storm? Wait, don’t all raise your hands all at once… Why stop with secret Nassau police records. What else can we chop into parade confetti? Ed Mangano’s credit report? Steve Bellone’s high school love letters? . . . What does Suffolk union boss Dan Farrell want his members to sit on? Wooden stools and milk crates? What does Rockefeller Center have over the Leg Lamp Lighting outside Northport Hardware? Not the Tigerettes Dance Team. Not beloved electrician Bob Cross in the pink bunny suit.
LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK
THE SANDY ANGELS
The danger is to single out this one or that one. The truth is there have been so 
many, we cannot possibly thank them all. If only we didn’t need them, but we did. And mostly unbidden, they arrived. No one on Long Island—no one!—imagined the scale of destruction we would face from Hurricane Sandy. No one understood how much help we would receive. We could never thank all of these people adequately. But that doesn’t mean, before they move on, we shouldn’t try. And try. And try.
E-mail ellis@henican.com
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“Apparently, they’d sooner snub their own doormen and caddies than hover outside a Target in the early-morning dew.”
What in the world are you going on about? There are millions of hard-working small business owners in this country who have saved a million dollars. I am one of them. I don’t have a doorman. I don’t play golf. I don’t snub ANYBODY. I work hard, I live in the suburbs, I pay taxes (yes, my fair share) and I shop like everybody else. I don’t shop on Black Friday, though, and never have, because I hate crowds. I guess that makes me some kind of elitist snob to you.
I would accuse you of classism, but I don’t believe there ARE classes in this country. There are just people who can better themselves by hard work.