Shop around

Trying to make "the shopping experience" appealing to men:

Willa Gillispie, a Jeffersonville woman who recently became a vendor for Silpada Jewelry, was thinking about Black Friday crowds and how many men spend the day avoiding stores.

So, she decided to come up with a shopping day for men. She calls it Black Monday.

“Men usually don't like to shop, so we thought we would put everything in one place and make it easy for them,” Gillispie said.

She and Debbie Taylor, a vendor for Mary Kay, organized an event Monday night at the Lewis and Clark Room at the Sheraton Hotel in Jeffersonville. The event, called Men's Holiday Extravaganza, was directed specifically at males.

[. . .]

Fifteen vendors were at the hotel, while men could watch football on the televisions in the lobby. There also were door prizes and a cash bar.

The vendors sold everything from jewelry, candles and chocolates to tools for women.

I've found a place like that to shop in, too, including the football on TV, but the bar is open there. It's called my living room, and there are thousands of vendors right on my computer screen. The bathroom is always available and the only time there's a crowd is when both cats want treats at the same time.

Actually, I don't mind "shopping" if it is defined as casually examining things I like in a relaxed way. I can spend hours in a bookstore or an electronic-toys place. I don't even mind grocery shopping, since I like to cook and pretty much know where everything is in the supermarket. But I don't get the whole "let's make a fun, all-day outing out of guessing what people will like and making ourselves crazy trying to find it" thing. I was talking to someone from work whose family has a yearly tradition of going to Indianapolis for a day and hitting all the big stores there "just because we think we can find more." Seems like a waste of a g