The Warwick Mall welcomed a large crowd on Black Friday; although not exactly one quite as big as in Black Fridays past.

With the mall generally devoid of gridlock, one cashier said Black Friday morning felt more like a particularly busy Saturday than some of the Black Fridays of years past.

Warwick Mall General Manager Domenic Schiavone said the holiday has been a little different since the mall no longer opened at midnight. That change, Schiavone said, was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has since remained.

“As the day goes on, the traffic gets more and more so,” Schiavone said. “I think people have adjusted to the new pattern of not opening at midnight.”

Other stores, according to Schiavone, started Black Friday sales earlier than the actual day, leading to fewer people showing up on the date itself but not a reduced number of shoppers overall.

“There’s still some unique savings to Black Friday, but the majority of the Black Friday pricing started a couple of weeks ago,” Schiavone said. “Overall, it takes people coming in and just spreads them out instead of congesting them all on a Friday, which is actually kind of nice because it doesn’t force that craziness.”

That isn’t to say, however, that there weren’t crowds waiting outside for stores to open. J.C. Penney manager Jennifer Campbell said that there were a “couple hundred” people outside her store when it opened at 5 a.m., two hours before the mall as a whole did.

“That was a nice feeling, because we were all unsure about how this Black Friday was going to go,” Campbell said.

According to Campbell, J.C. Penney had a much better Black Friday then they did in 2022, saying that there were noticeably more people shopping in the store and that the day had more of an energy to it than last year.

Not every shopkeeper felt the same as Campbell, though. Shopkeeper Nino Rizzo said that the day had been much less busy than he was used to, chalking it up to both online shopping and Black Friday sales beginning early.

“I’ve been here for 17 years- this is brutal,” Rizzo said. “It’s definitely dead compared to what it used to be.”

While online shopping and other factors have taken their toll, for some shoppers, the experience of going Black Friday shopping is what keeps them going back. Friends Gina Gentile and Shannon Livy, wearing matching shirts commemorating their years of Black Friday shopping together, said that while their Black Friday experience has changed, the spirit of the day was the same, and they were looking for some stocking stuffers.

“We love the experience,” Gentile said. “We don’t do it for the deals, we do it just to get out and shop around and get into the Christmas spirit.”

Fully in the Christmas spirit was Forever 21 employee Alyah Smith, who was walking around the store dressed as a Christmas tree handing out coupons for Forever 21’s Black Friday sale. While that was a novel experience for her, she said that the costume has had an effect in convincing customers to shop at the store.

“As you can tell, I’m very much a holiday person,” Smith said. “Everybody loves the Christmas tree.”

Though every Black Friday is unique, according to Schiavone, and each has its own challenges, one thing that stood out to him no matter the year or the size of the crowd were the faces in it.

“There’s a social aspect to it,” Schiavone said. “You see a lot of familiar faces, some families, going out with all the same T-shirts. They’ll come out and do their thing. This is part of the fun.”