I tend to avoid the shopping crowd that materializes on the day after Thanksgiving.  However, today we decided to go with our friend raepillow to go shopping at a crafts store in a strip mall not too far from us.  I had no expectation that the craft store would be particularly crowded, but there's a big computer store near there too and some other things.  But overall it wasn't all that busy.  I mean it was busy, sure, but not quite the mob scene I'd expect for the day after christmas. 

I had no trouble finding parking, didn't run into any rude people, etc.  It was ... odd.  My friend tweetrbg went to downtown SF and said she didn't see any larger crowds there either.  Then buzz_chick's blog entry that made it sound like she found a similarly calm experience.  I'm beginning to wonder if maybe black friday isn't nearly so black this year.  Given high gas prices, a crappy housing market, etc, perhaps this holiday season looks to be a bit ugly.

Anybody else notice anything unusual?