Friday, November 28, 2008, is a date that will live in infamy. Traditionally, or at least since the mid-1950s, the day after Thanksgiving is commonly regarded as the first day of America’s Christmas shopping season. Known as “Black Friday,” this is the busiest shopping day of the year. Retailers often advertise “door-buster” sales, slashing prices on big-ticket items so low that they actually take a loss , all in order to draw in as many customers as possible. Unfortunately, the build-up to all this excitement can often end with chaotic results.
For example: on Black Friday 2008, at a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, California, two men pulled guns and shot each other to death following an altercation.
And on the same day, at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, New York, a surging crowd of frenzied shoppers actually trampled a store employee to death.
These stories struck a chord with me, as I’d only a few days before returned from spending some time in Iraq. Over there, it seemed like most of the people I worked with were grateful just to have clean laundry every so often, or maybe a hot meal. And after spending some time in a legitimately dangerous place, it was absolutely shocking to come back home and find grown adults risking their lives here in America, and for what?
All of these reasons are why I took became fascinated by a Black Friday event in my adopted hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, where it appeared that a small but significant protest had taken place. That Friday morning, when business owners arrived at the upscale King Street shopping district to open their stores for a long day, they were shocked to discover their doors were… stuck. By midmorning, it become clear what had happened… sometime during the early morning hours, *somebody* had sealed the locks of over 70 businesses with superglue.
The unusual case made headlines for a few days, although most news outlets lost interest when it looked as if the crook had made a clean getaway. I couldn’t shake the story quite so easily, though— the offbeat story stayed fresh in my mind and more importantly, in my notebook. Just after Christmas 2008 I used this case as the inspiration behind my first novel, OUTSPOKEN, which found a good home with Vagabondage Press in 2011.
Man, time sure does fly— I recently looked up and noticed that we’re coming up on the ten-year anniversary of this hometown hit-and-run vandalism. By this point it looks like the King Street Glue Bandit made a clean getaway, since we’re long past South Carolina’s statute of limitations for vandalism. But still, whenever I look back on this case I’m left with a number of unanswered questions:
-Was this serial super glue assault really just a simple act of vandalism, as police investigators suspected? A spur of the moment thing, executed by some random kids with too much time on their hands? Or could it have really been designed as an inspired attack on consumer culture, maybe even an opening fusillade in a larger-scale war against capitalism?
-And who was the culprit, the person responsible for this sticky situation? (Or persons…did CPD investigators ever consider the possibility of a second gluer?) Was this vandalism pulled off by a self-styled revolutionary, someone like I imagined Abraham Lincoln Jenkins to be? Or was this whole thing simply the work of some boozed-up fraternity pledges, collars popped to conceal their identities against security cameras, who’ve since sworn an oath of silence to take this secret to their graves?
Even ten years later, this case still sets my mind into overdrive. And that’s why, this holiday season, I’m putting out a request for information on this cold case! I’d love to satisfy my curiosity by learning the rest of the story, and somebody out there has to know *something* about what really happened that night. If you have any information on this case… or if you actually are the “Glue Bandit” yourself… please reach out to me at jamesvachowski@gmail.com so we can talk. No guarantees on this, but any information leading to a personal interview with the Black Friday King Street Glue Bandit *may* be rewarded with a free copy of OUTSPOKEN.
And even if you don’t have any specific information, I’d greatly appreciate your assistance in spreading the word, particularly around the Charleston area. For anybody who was personally affected by or involved with this 2008 case, feel free to share your comments, stories or photos as well.
Thanks in advance– wishing you a safe, calm and glue-free holiday shopping experience!