On Friday, desperate, cash-strapped retailers are hoping you’ll show up and buy things (at huge markdowns!1!!!1!). It’s a national shopping day so special that it has a name and even a web site. Here in D.C., we don’t have a ton of destination shopping centers, but we do have a big one that wasn’t open this time last year: the DCUSA complex in Columbia Heights. For those of you planning on heading to Target or Marshalls on Friday, DCUSA, the MPD, ANC 1A, WMATA, and Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham all have your back.

In a series of messages to the Columbia Heights email list on Friday, Graham reported that Metro would be opening one hour early, at 4 a.m., to accommodate shoppers, and ANC 1A Vice Chair Anne Theisen passed along word from the MPD about …

… “the deployment of 30 police officers to the area that day (11/28), the temporary installation of portable toilets (although the exact location was not shared), and street performers to keep waiting shoppers occupied until they could get into the stores, which will be opening early that morning.

DC/USA is expecting people to sleep over Thanksgiving night and anticipates seeing lines that go around the block by the following morning.”

Street performers? We can’t wait to see what kind of performances we’ll be treated to at 4 a.m. on 14th Street NW. Fingers crossed for mimes! And naturally for the sake of the national economy, we’re also hoping for something like this.

For more on the special Metro hours on Friday, click here. In addition to the 4 a.m. opening time on Friday, note that Metro will operate on a Sunday schedule on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27, from 7 a.m. to midnight.

Photo by mindgutter