NEW YORK (AP) -- The gloomy economy didn't keep sleep-deprived, bargain-hungry shoppers from prowling the stores for Black Friday bargains.
Some, like Manhattan shopper Andrea Levin, were planning to buy fewer gifts this year and were choosing them more carefully. Her motto: ``Think twice before I buy.''
Like elsewhere in the country, New York shoppers hit the stores before the sun came up on Thursday, with cash register lines forming early at an Old Navy store in midtown Manhattan.
Down the street, Levin, making the rounds with her two grown daughters, went to Macy's flagship store in Herald Square a
half hour after it opened at 5.a.m.
The Yeshiva University employee said she wasn't seeing the kinds of deals she had expected. ``It doesn't look any different from last year,'' she said.
At the Best Buy store in Syracuse, N.Y., a line snaked past stores and around walkways on the second floor of Carousel
Center a few moments before the store's 5 a.m. opening about eight hours after some people near the front of the line had arrived.
Rob Schoeneck, the mall's manager, estimated about 1,000 people were waiting for the electronics store to open and said the crowd was about the same size as a year ago.
Inside, Kira Carinci, 33, a teacher from Cicero, N.Y., searched for the $80 ``Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock'' video game and guitar controller bundle for her son but said she is more concerned about money than she was last holiday season.
She said she had set aside a certain amount for Christmas spending.
Roxanne Lopez, 35, of Windsor, N.Y., rolled a gray suitcase through the handbag aisle as she shopped with her mother, Blanca Alcantar. The pair left home before 4 a.m.
Lopez planned to buy gifts for her sister, nephews and nieces and use the suitcase to carry them. Still, she also was trying to rein in her spending.
``It's a hard time; we don't know what's going to happen,'' the police detective said.
In New York City, 16-year-old Gerry Chien traveled from Queens to Manhattan to look for bargains at Macy's on ``pretty much anything.'' He said he shops on Black Friday nearly every year but this year, ``It feel a lot more empty.''
Jonathan Hinestroza, a 19-year-old college student from Long Island, got to Macy's by 5:10 a.m. Within an hour, he had bought one gift a $58 Coach wallet for a woman he liked.
He said he planned to cut back on spending for other people, though, because he doesn't have ``that type of money.''
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