as the owner and operator of an independent business the so called “Black Friday” means slower than normal sales in my usually busy retail store. no one lined up the night before, no television reporters broadcasting “live from the scene” and no one getting trampled when i unlock the door. being a specialty shop as it is means people expect that the stuff will be available when they get around to stopping here but Circuit City has 60 inch Cheng Shin plasma televisions for eighty-nine bucks and you know those won’t last long! the holiday shopping season for the independent retailer, especially in south-east Michigan these days is a nervous time. it seems to start later & later each year due to all the “can’t miss, deal of a life time, one weekend only” sales the major stores offer. the funny thing is that when channel 4 news had their online voting for the “best of Detroit” my store was the winner of it’s catagory but yet you could have shot a cannon through the place at almost any point yesterday and not hit anyone but there were police directing traffic into the Meijer parking lot a hundred yards down the street from me. as for people getting mowed down in the rush to get into an electronics store i chalk it up to Best Buy’s “Survival of the Cheapest” law of nature. and i’ll end this by telling you that i’m at work now, Saturday at Noon and i’ve got the time to type this…two weeks from now it’s sure to be a different story (i hope).