CLEARWATER – Around 9:45 a.m. at Westfield Shoppingtown, previously known as the Countryside Mall, the parking lot was full.

Like vultures, motorists slowly circled, ready to snatch the first available space. A shopper who was finished looked for his minivan.

“I lost my car,” Shayne Platt cried out to anyone who cared to listen.

A few moments went by.

“I found it,” said the 39-year-old Website salesman from New Port Richey.

Platt seemed both exhausted and excited as he put packages into the back of the minivan.

“I’ve been out since 3 (a.m.),” Platt said. He spent $500 at Best Buy, where he says DVDs that normally cost $15 sold for $5.

“I enjoy it. I enjoy crowds. I enjoy all this stuff. I’m weird,” he says.

Georgia Malpartida, a 60-year-old woman from Palm Harbor, wasn’t as jubilant as she and a male companion walked to a sport-utility vehicle.

“Here it’s terrible,” said Malpartida, referring to the parking.

She was glad to end her day of shopping.

“We started at 5 in the morning,” she said.

- Stephen Thompson

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