Dori Oliveira usually makes a holiday of Black Friday, although the post-Thanksgiving retail sales event this year proved a low-key celebration.

“It’s usually a family thing,” she said in the Fred Meyer parking lot on SE Third Street, in Bend. “I went out last night with my sister.”

She was out for round two on Friday, and even though she set out for a pair of slippers only, her shopping cart, topped with a dog bed, was filled to the brim.

Black Friday still draws a big crowd, although the weekend of shopping that starts on Thanksgiving “can no longer be seen as the ‘start’ of the holiday season,” Matthew Shay, National Retail Federation president and CEO, said in a statement, “though there’s no question it’s still important to millions of holiday shoppers and retailers of all shapes and sizes.”

Nationwide, those retailers expected about 225 million customers this year on Thursday, Friday and today, down slightly from last year and about 25 million fewer than 2013, according to the federation. Next up is a nationwide promotion, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, a term coined by the National Retail Federation to signal the start of the online bargain-shopping season.

In Bend, more than the usual weekday turnout of shoppers filled the aisles at Fred Meyer, Walmart, Macy’s and other retailers Friday, but customers reported none of the din and bustle associated with the day. Few shoppers said they waited in lines for the doors to open or for cashiers to ring up their purchases. Most said they found what they were looking for, though few were stocking up on gifts.

“Socks,” said Emily Freed, of Bend, pushing a cart out of Fred Meyer, which has a tradition of Black Friday sock sales. Indeed, the center-aisle sock table — half off all men’s socks — attracted a swirl of shoppers. “I did get a couple of gifts,” Freed said, “but I’m typically here for socks.”

Some, like Oliveira, said they turned out for bargains on Thursday afternoon, too. Some said they believed the proliferation of sales on days other than Friday, coupled with the cold weather and slippery, snow-and-ice caked streets kept many other shoppers at home.

“I think it’s the weather,” said Bill Walker, a security guard who started at 6 a.m. at the Bend River Promenade on NE Third Street. He said the turnout there, at the Macy’s and Kohl’s department stores, even in the early morning was what he considered light.

Randi Whitley, a shopper exiting Kohl’s, agreed.

“It’s definitely more mellow,” she said.

In previous years, Whitley turned out early and stood in line for Black Friday bargains, but not this year, she said, noting the temperature, still in the single digits at 9 a.m.

Melanie Mobley, a schoolteacher from Gilchrist, said she took advantage of sale prices to pick up items for her school’s giving tree. A veteran Black Friday shopper who turned out late on Thanksgiving in years past for midnight openings, she, too, noted the relative calm in Fred Meyer this year.

“We walked right up to an empty (check-out) line,” she said while loading her hatch-back with purchases in the Fred Meyer lot.

Julie Schedler, of Oregon City, said she comes out every year for Black Friday bargains. This year, “I didn’t wait in a line at all,” she said outside Fred Meyer.

Most shoppers surveyed Friday, like Beca Krumhold, came looking for bargains on ordinary items rather than gifts. Vacationing in Bend from Redwood City, California, she said outside Kohl’s that she needed some winter wear to cope with the winter cold.

For Jayde Clark, soon to be 13, the day held all its promised excitement, she said outside Macy’s. This year was her first Black Friday expedition, she said. She scored, too: a $20 coat and half-off her favorite video game and a Keurig coffeemaker, an early birthday gift.

“It’s my first year ever doing it,” Clark said. “I had to check it out.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com