Ready, Set, Queue

Bundled into parkas and sporting blue knit Best Buy caps, shoppers-in-waiting outside the electronics giant largely ignored the outsize movie screen playing part 2 of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Thursday evening.

In Mountain View,  San Carlos and elsewhere on the Peninsula, these folks began queuing up Wednesday, using Thanksgiving as a vehicle for attaining blessings to come in the form of discounted Xboxes, Kindles, laptop computers, iPods, PlayStations, and the evening's favorite: 42-inch Sharp LCD TVs for $200.

For retailers, this weekend matters plenty. Brisk sales account for as much as 40 percent of the year's revenue, and predict whether the rest of the year will keep the store in the black, hence the name "Black Friday." 

Big-box hangars like Best Buy and Target opened at midnight – some sooner -- with rock-bottom sales, joined by chains including Gap, Inc. In all, sales are predicted to top last year’s Black Friday total by more than 27 percent.

Customers gathered at the doors of Old Navy Redwood City before 10 p.m. Thursday, although the doors wouldn’t officially open until midnight, said operations manager Andre Caldamiz. The big attraction: Kodak EasyShare digital cameras for the first wave of shoppers.

On top of 20-, 40- and 60-percent discounts, Gap, Inc.’s Banana Republic offered women's jeans for $19 until 12 noon today.

One could ask both sellers and buyers whether it’s worth it – the giveaways and deep discounts on one hand, a long, numbing wait in the cold on the other.

Teresa Villicana entertains no doubt. A nurse, Villicana has been making due with disability since she suffered a shoulder injury earlier this year. Villicana and her daughter will scoop up a laptop, printer and a television – purchases that would ordinarily break their budget.

Gilberto Ruiz and his family expect to save at least $1,000 by shopping for a electronics, including an  X Box 360 and a computer for his sons Angel, 10, and Daniel, 8.

“We need it for school,” said Angel. “We can share it.”

And retailers will profit handsomely as well. Across the country, some152 million consumers will hit the stores over the next three days -- up from 138 million last year, according to the National Retail Federation. It’s a trend that also saw sales triple from 2009 to 2010.

“We have six registers on the first floor, and two on the second floor, which we never usually open,” said Banana Republic  Palo Alto sales associate Gabriela De Anda, who showed up for her shift at 4:45 a.m. “The line’s been long ever since. We’re very busy.”

But some stores are also getting a black eye in the press for creating a Black Thursday.

Desperate to get the cash registers ringing on the most vital shopping weekend of the year, many opted to open early yesterday, yanking one of the few guaranteed days off for workers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unlocked its doors at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day; its supercenters already do business 24 hours a day. Toys R Us opened at 9 p.m.

Stores say if they wait, they will miss a badly-needed infusion of cash. 

Occupy Wall Street protesters in Redwood City and across the nation have urged shoppers to boycott national chains. Civic groups and the U.S. Small Business Administration are urging consumers to patronize locally-owned retailers tomorrow, which they are calling Small Business Saturday.