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Property sale and Tax Anticipation Note on upcoming meeting agenda for Wilkes-Barre City Council

WILKES-BARRE TWP. &mdash; It was a Black Friday unlike any other, and it seems like more folks than ever took the opportunity to stay home.
				While Black Friday is the traditional kick-off for holiday shopping, the crowds were thinner than Black Fridays of years past, thanks in large part to a shift towards online shopping during a massive nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases.
				According to reporting from the Associated Press, many retailers closed their doors on Thanksgiving Day but beefed up their safety protocols to reassure wary customers about coming in on Black Friday. Stores have also moved their doorbuster deals online and ramped up curbside pickup options as a last grasp at sales before the year ends and they head into the dark days of winter with the pandemic still raging.
				&ldquo;Black Friday is still critical,&rdquo; said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. &ldquo;No retailer wants it to be tarnished. It&rsquo;s still vital to get their consumers spending and get consumers into the holiday mood.&rdquo;
				The trend could be seen here locally, with the parking lots at the Arena Hub Plaza looking less like Black Friday and more like any given Friday. While some stores had long lines outside, it seemed as though most of them were caused by social distancing requirements more than anything else.
				And it doesn&rsquo;t help that some of the year&rsquo;s biggest ticket items were notably difficult to get; Sony&rsquo;s new Playstation 5 and Microsoft&rsquo;s Xbox Series X and Series S, only released this month, have been incredibly difficult to find, with Sony and Microsoft only promising an extremely limited number of the video game consoles to retailers, sometimes as few as two.
				It left little reason to visit some of the more traditionally popular Black Friday hotspots after the initial rush, with the GameStop near the Wilkes-Barre Township Walmart seeming virtually empty at around 11 a.m.
				All that said, though, there still were plenty of shoppers out, with some suggesting it was more of a way to get out of the house than anything.
				Mark Fonzo, of Wilkes-Barre, decided to stop at Best Buy for a quick gift run. According to him, he isn&rsquo;t normally a Black Friday shopper.
				&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t do Black Friday, to be honest with you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I just dropped my wife off at work, and thought I&rsquo;d stop in and pick something up.&rdquo;
				Fonzo said he got a gift for one of his sons from the electronics store, but declined to say what it was, in case this article spoils the surprise &mdash; but we wouldn&rsquo;t tell, anyway.
				Meanwhile, in downtown, Patricia Harrison, of Shavertown, was heading out of Boscov&rsquo;s. She said she slept in, not feeling the need to rush as in Black Fridays past.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;re just getting started,&rdquo; she said around noon. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking to see what&rsquo;s out there.&rdquo;
				Harrison said that she had already done some shopping online, but was looking to pad out the gifts with some in-person purchases. Having left Boscov&rsquo;s empty-handed, she said her next stop was the area around the Wyoming Valley Mall.
				The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Black Friday sees thinner crowds, but crowds nonetheless