Shopping

Call it Bleak Friday because yesterday's Black Friday - the traditional opening of the Christmas shopping season - wasn't all bells and bliss for local retailers. Most shoppers walked the sidewalks empty-handed. Despite the lack of buying frenzy, it was perfect shopping weather. There was no excuse for people to stay home with the leftovers on this Black Friday, which gets its name because that's the day retailers hope the yearly profit turns the corner, moving out of the red ink and into the black.

This is the time of year I love because it's not too late for me to plan to do my Christmas shopping early. December is still young and you can bet I'll be out there shopping up a storm in the next day or two . . . early next week at the latest. In other years I've almost ruined Christmas by leaving my shopping to the last minute. I get so nervous about not having a good present for someone that I can't sleep nights. I give serious presents to 11 people. That's a lot of shopping.

What Mercia Grassi wants for Christmas shopping, as well as all-year-round, is more service. "I recently walked in and out of 110 stores," reported Grassi, who is Drexel University professor emeritus of marketing, "and in only four of them did anyone acknowledge my presence. " Mercia Grassi is to retail stores what a restaurant critic is to food outlets. She rates decor, what is served, and how it is served. And she's tough. She doesn't give many four-star ratings. She doesn't hesitate to complain.

After researchers check off their to-do list priorities (1. Nail down that vaccine. 2. Feed the really fat mouse. 3. Get to the bottom of this obesity gene thing), they should get right to work on identifying our body's most essential chemical. I refer, of course, to the shopping hormone, the one the body releases as soon as we enter The Plaza, The Court, Liberty Place, Willow Grove Park, Cherry Hill Mall. Identifying - and synthetically duplicating - this hormone will rock the medical community.

Whenever Sally telephones, I know that she is going to try to persuade me to go to a shopping mall with her. I ask, "What do you have to buy?" She seldom has anything specific that she needs to buy - she's just going to look. But, of course, she does end by using her credit card several times. It seems to me that compulsive shopping is a purely American phenomenon. I can't think of anyone among my European or Latin American friends who has this neurosis. On the other hand, practically every American woman of my acquaintance wastes an extraordinary amount of time and money making the rounds of stores and boutiques.

West Chester merchants will strike up the bands to celebrate the official start of their Wednesdays in West Chester program. At least 20 stores and restaurants will stay open until 8 p.m. on Wednesday evenings starting this week, according to Bill Thornton of Gramma's Attic, an antiques store. "These stores are committed to trying it all year round," Thornton said. "We need to have a Wednesday night shopping area down here not just till Christmas because it is something the people in town want.

It is difficult today to see anything with a fresh eye. Anywhere we go, we have probably seen pictures first. Carrying their overloaded baggage of images, contemporary travelers know what they are going to see and even how they are going to see it. One of the fascinations of looking at early travel photography is to see the most cliche-ridden of subjects, such as the pyramids of Egypt and the Colosseum in Rome, shown as something fresh and new....

Not every day at the Jersey Shore can be 80 and sunny. That's when it's time to explore the alternate universe: shopping. You could head for the Atlantic City outlets, but you'd be missing out on the novel spots that dot the coast. Here are my favorites, in a handful of Shore towns: Ocean City has two main shopping hubs. The first, obviously, is the boardwalk, lined with T-shirt stores, eateries, rides, and mini-golf courses. Three stores to hit: The Islander , which sells quality women's fashions geared to 20- to 30-year-olds, plus some men's items and home accents; Air Circus , with every kind of kite imaginable (easy to spot from anywhere on the boardwalk since kites usually are flying on the beach in front of the store)

It's 28 days before Christmas And all through the stores Sale and percent-off signs proliferate as lures The merchandise is displayed on store shelves with care In hopes budget-happy shoppers soon will be there. Even though retailers have predicted they'll enjoy a more prosperous Christmas this year than last, they're clearly nervous. They've been having sales like crazy. "I bought some gifts for my granddaughter at J.C. Penney's at the Gallery last week and I was shocked because they weren't on sale," recalled Judith A. Zernik, associate professor of merchandising at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.

Bensalem Township is legally entitled to impose a $1.80 per-square-foot impact fee on the Landmark Plaza shopping center being built on Galloway Road, township solicitor Emil Toften said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors. The five-member Board of Supervisors has wrestled for several weeks with the question of whether the shopping center's developer, Landmark Design Associates of Philadelphia, must pay about $95,400 in fees. Among its concerns is Landmark's threat to sue if the fee is imposed.