Grey Friday

We've got kin in town for Thanksgiving, and were out in the streets and shops of Manhattan today, on Black Friday.

We were in SoHo, TriBeCa, and the Financial District. None of us had any difficulty moving on the sidewalk, and the stores weren't too packed to move around in.

That is incredibly odd... and really bad news... on what's usually the busiest (and, for retailers, most lucrative) shopping day of the year.

Meanwhile, mobs are ripping doors off the hinges at Wal-Mart and trampling people to death.

I think the economic action has definitely shifted down-market.