Holiday Shopping

The merriment of holiday shopping was jarred last night by violence on the parking lot of Owings Mills mall, as a young man was shot to death after an argument, Baltimore County police said. The victim, identified as Kevin Mehdi Garmzaban, 18, of the 6700 block of Sunset Drive in Eldersburg, was shot in the upper body at 6:30 p.m. several hundred feet from the nearest store - Macy's - in a killing that a police spokeswoman emphasized was not a random act of violence. Cpl. Vickie Warehime, the spokeswoman, said Garmzaban was with two male friends when two others approached them near the department store and asked for a ride.

Online shopping topped $30 billion with 10 days to go until Christmas, up an astonishing 15 percent over last year and providing a much-needed boost to the economic mood in this country. You're welcome. OK, I didn't spent the $30 billion myself. I had help. Online shopping has been available for Christmas for a while now, but this year I — and apparently a lot of other shoppers -- bought just about all my gifts with the simple click of a mouse. No traffic jams. No battle for a parking spot.

In a recent column, Jean Marbella asked if shopping is really good for the economy ( "Shopping for Christmas, and for economic recovery," Dec. 4). One way to help the economy is to shop locally. Every dollar spent in a neighborhood store returns about 45 cents to the community, whereas every dollar spent at the mall or with major retail chains only returns about 15 cents to the local area. Shopping in one of Baltimore's neighborhood stores triples the impact on the local economy.

Thousands of puppies are bought and sold every year during the holiday season, which means thousands of consumers end up unknowingly supporting puppy mills. Puppy mills are inhumane, commercial breeding facilities that place an emphasis on profits over the health of the dogs they sell. The breeding dogs at puppy mills live their entire lives in cages, typically in deplorable conditions. As a result, their puppies are often unhealthy and can carry infectious diseases. Two recent investigations by The Humane Society of the United States demonstrate the wide-spread consumer fraud and abuse that characterize the industry.

In a more economically naive time, making reference to the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday was something of an insider's comment. Most definitely, it had become a major shopping day long before the promise of door busters (another term once considered the jargon of retail insiders) drew crowds of shoppers out into the dark hours on a Friday morning to wait in line the way teenagers once waited in line for concert tickets. These days it would be easy to conclude that the black in Black Friday refers to the time of day when shoppers start lining up, or the dim prospect of finding a parking spot, but the origin of the name is much more upbeat: it was considered the day by which retail businesses had better be showing black ink on the books.

More than 70 Baltimore City schoolchildren went holiday shopping Saturday morning with school police officers during the annual "Shop with a Cop" event. City Schools Police Chief Marshall "Toby" Goodwin and 30 officers volunteered their time, picking the students up from their homes and taking them with lights and sirens activated to a Wal-Mart in Glen Burnie to shop for themselves and their families. Goodwin said police raised enough money for each child to have $100 to spend.

The shaky economy has retailers and forecasters looking anxiously toward the holiday shopping season. In the coming weeks, The Sun will be taking a close look at consumers' plans, priorities and preferences. We are interested in your plans for holiday shopping, your views on the economy and your likes and dislikes about stores and malls.You can make your views known by taking part in SUNDIAL's shopping survey between now and Wednesday. To take part, call 783-1800 (268-7736 in Anne Arundel County)

AS SOON AS the holiday shopping season begins, I start chanting this incantation: "Just pretend it is a hardware store. Just pretend it is a hardware store."I do this when I find myself in one of those "other" stores, the kind of store that sells clothes or household furnishings. The kind of store you have to visit when you buy presents for people on your holiday gift list.I do this to get myself in a hardware-store kind of mood. I am comfortable prowling around a hardware store. But I get uneasy when I have to spend much time in places where you are supposed to "shop."

THIS IS a song I sing almost every year at this time because it's A Thing with me, the idea that if we are to spend - it's a patriotic duty, don't you know - gobs of money on holiday shopping, let's do some of it right down the street. Pardon the repetition, but here's my credo: I'm going Main Street for holiday shopping again this year. I'll patronize businesses that are not part of large chains, that are owned and operated by people with long and healthy roots in the community - the ones who take out ads in our kids' soccer yearbooks and the programs for the high school plays - businesses that must not die. OK, there I said it. It won't do much good, but I said it. You'll probably go to the malls and the outlets anyway, and thousands of you will flood into that massive place called Arundel Mills, formerly a perfectly nice swath of trees down by the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

Baltimore County police have identified the victim of the fatal shooting Monday night at Towson Town Center. Rodney Vest Pridget, 19, who lives in the Baltimore area, was found dead of gunshot wounds about 6:22 p.m. near a service entrance to Nordstrom at the mall, investigators said Tuesday morning. Detectives do not believe the shooting was a random act, but officials said they were not providing additional details at this time due to the continuing investigation. Detectives are investigating a number of leads, including video footage recovered from the mall, police said.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for mostly sunny skies with a high temperature around 50 degrees. The low temperature is expected to be around 39 degrees tonight. TRAFFIC Here are today's morning traffic issues . FROM LAST NIGHT... Bay search for missing boater to resume Monday : Maryland Natural Resources Police said they would resume searching for a missing boater Monday morning, nearly two days after his sailboat capsized on the Chesapeake Bay, killing another man and sending a woman to the hospital.

Matthew Waylett has put down his cocktail to adjust the tilt of an Indiana Jones-esque fedora, admiring his reflection in the mirror set up at the bar. It's Men's Night Out at the Manor Tavern, and Waylett has been lured to the shopping event, not so much by the chance to buy as the promise of cigars, free-flowing bourbon and a steak dinner. "You won't catch me dead in a mall," says the Monkton man, back in his own John Deere cap. "But when you bring whiskey into the equation …" With its first Men's Night Out, the Baltimore County tavern joins what's looking like a nationwide experiment in testosterone-fueled retail this holiday season.

More than 70 Baltimore City schoolchildren went holiday shopping Saturday morning with school police officers during the annual "Shop with a Cop" event. City Schools Police Chief Marshall "Toby" Goodwin and 30 officers volunteered their time, picking the students up from their homes and taking them with lights and sirens activated to a Wal-Mart in Glen Burnie to shop for themselves and their families. Goodwin said police raised enough money for each child to have $100 to spend.

In a more economically naive time, making reference to the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday was something of an insider's comment. Most definitely, it had become a major shopping day long before the promise of door busters (another term once considered the jargon of retail insiders) drew crowds of shoppers out into the dark hours on a Friday morning to wait in line the way teenagers once waited in line for concert tickets. These days it would be easy to conclude that the black in Black Friday refers to the time of day when shoppers start lining up, or the dim prospect of finding a parking spot, but the origin of the name is much more upbeat: it was considered the day by which retail businesses had better be showing black ink on the books.

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve seem to have run out of ammo. It's gridlock as usual for Congress. States and cities are cutting spending and shedding jobs. Is it time for the spender of last resort — the American consumer — to put a prop under the economy? Spending per shopper over the post-Thanksgiving weekend was set to pop by 9.1 percent compared with that of the same period last year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. Store traffic was up 6.6 percent, and the federation says average outlays per shopper were $399, up from $365 last year.

This year, the packed-house madness that is Black Friday had petered out well before dawn. With many stores opening at midnight Thursday and some starting sales hours earlier, thousands of Baltimore-area shoppers arrived - and left - in the wee hours. When nursing assistants Wendy Agusea and Christiana Anyajike walked into an hhgregg store in Hanover at 7:30 a.m. after working an overnight shift, they found none of the big deals they were hoping to get. Sony cameras for $50?

Baltimore County will offer free metered parking over the holidays, officials said Friday. People can get two hours of free parking every day from Nov. 25 through 27, and the week before Christmas, from Dec. 18 through 24. The move is meant to encourage people to shop locally for the holidays and patronize Baltimore County's restaurants. alisonk@baltsun.com twitter.com/aliknez