Photo: FLLewis/Media City G -- The future site of a Walmart 1301 North Victory Place in the Empire Center Burbank

 Burbank is getting a Walmart with dirt cheap prices, questionable labor practices, and the retailer’s notorious Black Friday culture. Last month at the Empire Center, the future home of Burbank’s Walmart, the giant retailer held a promotional event boasting about the benefits its store will bring to the community. However, Burbank residents must realize that the retailer’s massive advertising campaigns, concerned mainly with profits, are going to attract some of those crazed Black Friday shoppers to the new Walmart in B-town.

Violence erupted at several Walmarts across the country yesterday and Thanksgiving night. One of the ugliest incidents occurred at the store in Porter Ranch. In a Los Angeles Times report, witnesses described a scene of chaos, mayhem, and a pepper spray attack by a woman police say was “competitive shopping.” 

The discount king did not release an official comment about the violence, but in a Times’ article Walmart spokesman, Greg Rossiter, referred to it as “… a few unfortunate incidents.” A brush-off to a Black Friday company culture that has fueled violence, which has resulted in injuries and one tragic death.

Three years ago, in an exclusive report, I wrote about this Black Friday culture and the first hand experiences of a former Walmart employee. In part 1, the ex-employee described how he was almost trampled by out of control Black Friday shoppers and in part 2, he recounts a disturbing incident where an announcement by a Walmart manager sent an anxious Black Friday crowd into a frenzy.

By the way, did you hear Bloomingdale’s is opening a store in nearby Glendale? And Burbank is getting a Walmart — wonderful.

Now that we’ve stuffed ourselves with the Thanksgiving fixings, it’s off to the stores and malls to stuff shopping bags with deals and bargains. Wait, not so fast. Black Friday may not really be the day to get the best prices for your holiday items and gifts.

A study conducted from mid-November to mid-December 2010 by Consumer Reports and Decide.com discovered “… the lowest prices of the season on the included items were not on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, the day following the Thanksgiving weekend. For example, more than a quarter of the recommended TVs and cameras were at least 5 per cent cheaper between Cyber Monday and December 13 than they were earlier, including during the Black Friday weekend.”

“There’s no doubt you can score some incredible bargains by getting up extra early or staying up past your bedtime to take in the midnight madness sales,” says Consumer Reports’ senior editor and shopping expert Tod Marks in a PR Newswire release. “But retailing trends suggest that the opportunity to score a great deal won’t end this weekend. So there’s no need to panic.”

So shop if you must today — but buy only if you think it’s truly a great deal.

New stats show holiday shoppers spent more this season than last

Some Christmas cheer for retailers and good news for the economy today. Consumer spending during the period of November first through Christmas Eve rose 3.6 percent. That’s a heck of a lot better than what happened last year, when fears of economic disaster had shoppers holding tight to their money and thus sales plunged 2.3 percent, according to a report on Reuters.

For more on those earlier figures, analysts’ reaction to them, and a look at some of the retail winners and losers click here for the full story.

 The money just keeps rolling in for the Hollywood Studios

Is there a recession in Tinseltown? You wouldn’t know it by the way the big studios are making the green at the Box Office. The Christmas weekend turned out to be the best ever, bringing in $270 million, up 34 percent over last year, according to Box Office Mojo. Thanks to a slew of crowd pleasing flicks like “Avatar,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” and “It’s Complicated.”

The previous record for the most profitable weekend was July 18-20, 2008, when “The Dark Knight” and “Mamma Mia!” opened.

 Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. Pictures Group announced today that it reached a ninth consecutive $1 billion-plus year for the distribution of domestic and international films. Warner is projecting a domestic Box Office of $2.13 billion and foreign returns of $1.86 billion, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A whole lot of local folks are hoping see some of that studio cash get pumped into new film productions right here in the Southland, real soon, like in 2010.

Shoppers are expected to flood stores and malls today

On the last weekend before Christmas, there are predictions shoppers will get real serious about their gift buying. Retailers are hoping to be swamped by folks looking for bargains and last minute gift ideas. No matter how good the numbers are this weekend, some analysts say they won’t be good enough to boost the holiday season into the black for retailers.

Also, a snowstorm may slow down shoppers back east. Locally, the forecast is for sunny skies with temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s, So folks here can shop till they drop in near perfect weather.  More on the Super Weekend Shopfest here.

In Burbank flu shots hard to find

Still need to get a flu shot or two?  Now is definitely the time to get vaccinated because a lot of folks get sick with influenza this time of year. The latest news from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is that there are over 2.4 million doses of H1N1 vaccine in the county and, therefore, it is now available to everyone, not just those in the high risk groups.

Last Tuesday, in a news release posted on the county H1N1 web page, L.A. County Health Office Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding announced the policy change: “Adequate vaccine supply has arrived in Los Angeles County, allowing providers to administer H1N1 vaccine to any patient over the age of six months…”

However, there still appears to be a shortage of the H1N1 and or the seasonal vaccine in areas of Burbank. Last Tuesday, I checked at the Pavilions’ pharmacy at 1110 Alameda Avenue, and was told they ran out of the seasonal flu vaccine on Monday and NEVER received a supply of H1NI vaccine.

However, I managed to track down some available flu shots at the CVS Pharmacy Minute Clinic at 511 Hollywood Way. They had both the H1N1 and the seasonal vaccines on Wednesday, but the staff told me they did not know how long the supply would last or if it would be replenished. So you might want to add flu shots to your holiday to-do list.

 Cyber Monday Sales Up

The keyboards were clicking and online shoppers were buying on Cyber Monday. Early data indicates sales were up 14 percent over last year. On the average 4.3 million consumers per minute reportedly visited shopping web sites yesterday. More on the cyber shopping bonanza here.  

Black Friday Sales Tumble

Big crowds turned out on Black Friday and over the Thanksgiving weekend, but apparently those shoppers were more lookie-loos than serious buyers. Early figures show those shoppers spent 8 percent less than last year — which is really bad news all around. Consumer spending reportedly fuels the U.S. economy by as much as 70 percent.  Reuters has more on the 2009 holiday shopping season.  

IRS Holding $123.5 Million in Unclaimed Tax Refunds

Over a 100,000 refund checks were returned to the Internal Revenue Service this year, because of problems with the addresses. The average tax refund is over a thousand bucks! Now that would help add a little cheer to the holiday season. Here’s the story and details on how to claim some of that dough.

I will no longer be able to think of Black Friday as just the day after Thanksgiving that kick starts the holiday shopping season. Yesterday, the crowds showed up to hunt for bargains, but some really ugly incidents marred this yearly tradition.

About a 100 miles or so away at a Toys ‘R’ Us in Palm Desert, horrified shoppers watched two women go at each other in a bloody fistfight. Then, their two male companions upped the violence by engaging in a shootout that left both dead.

Another shopping tragedy erupted across the nation in Long Island, New York, where thousands of early morning shoppers turned into an unruly mob, surged through the doors of a Wal-Mart, trampling to death a male temp employee and injuring several others in the stampede.

Black Friday was made more painful by the bloody terrorist siege in Mumbai, India, which was moving toward an end. Today, officials are saying the death toll is somewhere around 200 with 300 injured. At least five of the dead are Americans.

Black Friday is traditionally a benchmark for retailers, hoping the profits on that day of shopping will put them in the black and signal more of the same on the holiday shopping days ahead. Now, it will be hard to think of Black Friday without remembering the violence and death that occurred on this day; robbing us of some of the joy of the season.