In some respects, Black Friday 2025 wasn’t really the “holiday” of years past, according to Santa Clarita shoppers taking care of early holiday purchases this year.
While the deals were significant in some areas, especially children’s toys, other items stayed stubbornly expensive – but reduced demand in-store also meant thinner crowds to navigate as the day went on, as well as fewer overwhelmed store employees.
“It’s not as crazy as it used to be,” said Santa Clarita resident John Daly. “It was like a normal weekend at Target … it was kind of nice, it was easy, we have time to go hit up another store.”
John and his 12-year-old son Drew came away from the Valencia Target with a handful of games, including an expansion pack for the game Unstable Unicorns for a cool $10. The pack of baseball cards they snagged on the way out was, unfortunately, not a Black Friday deal.
Other shoppers picking up toys and other kids’ holiday gifts seemed satisfied with this year’s haul.
Santa Clarita resident Amy Allen wiped out the kids’ holiday gifts with her mother and aunt in tow Friday. Kids’ games at Target and Bath and Body Works items were, predictably, the best deals, and paid off their hunch that discounts would be much better in-store than online.
“We call it foot soldiering,” Allen said. “This year, it’s less about online and more about instant gratification … online, it’s just the same price, and then you have to wait and hope to God it shows up on Amazon.”
But the shoppers looking for the traditional Black Friday deals on some electronic equipment were in for a bit of a rude surprise this year.
Best Buy shopper Jared Montaug said he was shocked at one price tag while he and his brother Ethan were out hunting for SD cards and equipment for their phones.
“Tariffs have made things skyrocket,” Jared said. “There was an SD card, you saw it for like $50 last year, and it was around $130.”
Ethan said that between the two of them, they hadn’t found most of the things they were looking for, but it wasn’t all bad: Besides taking home a new virtual reality headset as an early Christmas present, the pair did report a good deal on a USB cord, as well as much lighter in-store lines than last year.
If there was a single Black Friday winner in Santa Clarita this year, one unambiguous case of a deal bestowed by the holiday, it was Simi Valley resident Adriana Cortez. And unlike other purchases made Friday, planned or otherwise, it’s possible that Cortez’s may actually change her life for the better.
As the owner of Simi Valley-based catering company Rosie’s Mini Pancakes, Cotez makes acai bowls, cotton candy, and the titular pancakes. But she’s been looking to add one more menu item for some time.
“I’m trying to add one more thing to the list, which is going to be coffee,” she said.
An Instagram ad for a brand-new Breville espresso machine, discounted by more than $100 off the original price, brought Cortez and her husband Jesse to the Santa Clarita Best Buy.
“I’ve been looking at this machine for well over a year already,” she said. “I was like, ‘You know, I’m just going to pull the plug and just get it now.’”
It’s hard to predict what next year’s Black Friday might look like, but as far as Christmas goes, it looks like quite a few kids have something to look forward to.
For the adults, maybe not so much – but if you’re hiring Rosie’s Mini Pancakes anytime soon, at least you can now count on coffee.
