M.I.T. Lab Hatches Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens

HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?

Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.

The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.

A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. That’s not too far behind Thomas Edison, who had 1,093. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.

Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.

Along the way, Dr. Langer and his lab, including about 60 postdoctoral and graduate students at a time, have found a way to navigate some slippery territory: the intersection of academic research and the commercial market.

Over the last 30 years, many universities — including M.I.T. — have set up licensing offices that oversee the transfer of scientific discoveries to companies. These offices have become a major pathway for universities seeking to put their research to practical use, not to mention add to their revenue streams.

In the sciences in particular, technology transfer has become a key way to bring drugs and other treatments to market. “The model of biomedical innovation relies on research coming out of universities, often funded by public money,” says Josephine Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research organization based in Garrison, N.Y.

Just a few of the products that have emerged from the Langer Lab are a small wafer that delivers a dose of chemotherapy used to treat brain cancer; sugar-sequencing tools that can be used to create new drugs like safer and more effective blood thinners; and a miniaturized chip (a form of nanotechnology) that can test for diseases.

The chemotherapy wafer, called the Gliadel, is licensed by Eisai Inc. The company behind the sugar-sequencing tools, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, raised $28.4 million in an initial public offering in 2004. The miniaturized chip is made by T2Biosystems,  which completed a $23 million round of financing in the summer of 2011.

“It’s inconvenient to have to send things to a lab,” so the company is trying to develop more sophisticated methods, says Dr. Ralph Weissleder, a co-founder, with Dr. Langer and others, of T2Biosystems and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

FOR Dr. Langer, starting a company is not the same as it was, say, for Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook. “Bob is not consumed with any one company,” says H. Kent Bowen, an emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who wrote a case study on the Langer Lab. “His mission is to create the idea.”

Dr. Bowen observes that there are many other academic laboratories, including highly productive ones, but that the Langer Lab’s combination of people, spun-out companies and publications sets it apart. He says Dr. Langer “walks into the great unknown and then makes these discoveries.”

Dr. Langer is well known for his mentoring abilities. He is “notorious for replying to e-mail in two minutes, whether it’s a lowly graduate school student or the president of the United States,” says Paulina Hill, who worked in his lab from 2009 to 2011 and is now a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners. (According to Dr. Langer, he has corresponded directly with President Obama about stem cell research and federal funds for the sciences.)

Dr. Langer says he looks at his students “as an extended family,” adding that “I really want them to do well.”

And they have, whether in business or in academia, or a combination of the two. One former student, Ram Sasisekharan, helped found Momenta and now runs his own lab at M.I.T. Ganesh Venkataraman Kaundinya is Momenta’s chief scientific officer and senior vice president for research.

Hongming Chen is vice president of research at Kala Pharmaceuticals. Howard Bernstein is chief scientific officer at Seventh Sense Biosystems, a blood-testing company. Still others have taken jobs in the law or in government.

Dr. Langer says he spends about eight hours a week working on companies that come out of his lab. Of the 25 that he helped start, he serves on the boards of 12 and is an informal adviser to 4. All of his entrepreneurial activity, which includes some equity stakes, has made him a millionaire. But he says he is mainly motivated by a desire to improve people’s health.

Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.

The research in labs like Dr. Langer’s is eyed closely by pharmaceutical companies. While drug companies employ huge research and development teams, they may not be as freewheeling and nimble, Dr. Langer says. The basis for many long-range discoveries has “come out of academia, including gene therapy, gene sequencing and tissue engineering,” he says.

He has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies. Their large size, he says, can end up being an impediment.

“Very often when you are going for real innovation,” he says, “you have to go against prevailing wisdom, and it’s hard to go against prevailing wisdom when there are people who have been there for a long time and you have some vice president who says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense.’ ”

Pharmaceutical companies are eager to tap into the talent at leading research universities. In 2008, for example, Washington University in St. Louis announced a $25 million pact with Pfizer to collaborate more closely on biomedical research.

But in some situations, the close — critics might say cozy — ties between business and academia have the potential to create conflicts of interest.

There was a controversy earlier this year when it was revealed that the president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center owned stock in Aveo Oncology, which had announced earlier that the university would be leading clinical trials of one of its cancer drugs.  Last month, the University of Texas announced that he would be allowed to keep his ties with three pharmaceutical companies, including Aveo Oncology; his holdings will be placed in a blind trust.

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Rosenthal: Big Ten getting too big for its own good?

There's a lesson the empire builders at Big Ten Conference headquarters in Park Ridge would do well to heed if they can be convinced to stop peering out to the distant horizon:

Growth through acquisition is fraught with peril.

"In the business world you acquire new companies and you have to deal with different corporate cultures, different priorities and so forth," Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates LLC, an investment firm, said in an interview. "Merging them is often very messy and often fails. Here you're merging two teams into an existing conference and it creates risks. … Even college football teams have different cultures, different ways of thinking about how to win and different standards."

There undoubtedly was a logic behind each acquisition as the old Sears sought to expand and diversify its corporate profile. By the time the Chicago-area company's portfolio grew to include Allstate insurance, Coldwell Banker real estate and Dean Witter Reynolds stock brokerage, it was clear the increase in size was in no way matched by an increase in strength.

Rather than an all-powerful Colossus astride many sectors at once, it was reduced to an unfocused blob, bereft of identity, covering plenty of ground but hardly standing tall. Years after shedding its far-flung holdings, Sears has yet to regain its muscle, mojo or market share.

"It's hard to find a better example of a company that lost its mission and focus in the quest for growth," Arnott said.

"(Growth) may be partly a defensive move. It may be ego driven. In the corporate arena, you certainly see that in spades," he said. "When growth is through acquisition, you have to figure out what the real motivation is. Is it synergy, the most overused word in the finance community, or is it ego?"

Adding the University of Maryland and New Jersey's Rutgers University in 2014 will push the Big Ten to 14 schools and far beyond the Midwestern territory for which it's known. But doing so may not achieve what its backers envision.

Rather than spread the conference's brand, it may merely dilute it. The fit may be corrosive, not cohesive.

There is a school of thought that this is but the latest evidence that the Big Ten is not about athletics, academics or even the Midwest. Instead, it is just a television network, the schools content providers and student-athletes talent.

As it is, the overall TV payout is said to give each of the 12 current Big Ten schools about $21 million per year. They point to the Big Ten's lucrative deals with ESPN and its own eponymous cable network, a partnership with News Corp. They note that public schools Rutgers and Maryland are near enough to New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to drive a better bargain with cable carriers.

To Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, a New Jersey native, the addition is more the result of a paradigm shift that has redrawn the college sports map over the past decade. Some conferences splinter. Others seize new turf. The result: Idaho's Boise State football team is poised to join the Big East Conference next year.

"Institutions that get together for academics or athletics have got to be cognizant that they are competing for students, they are competing for student athletes, they are competing for research dollars," Delany told reporters.

"When you see a Southern conference in the Midwest or you see a Southern conference in the Plains states or whether you see other conferences in the Midwest or Northeast, it impacts your recruitment. ... It impacts everything you do," he said. "At a certain point you get to a tipping point. The paradigm has shifted, and you decide on a strategy to basically position yourself for the next decade or half-century."

Big has always meant more than 10 in the Big Ten, an intercollegiate entity formed by seven Midwestern universities that now boasts 12 with the bookends of Penn State and Nebraska added in 1990 and last year, respectively. Last week's announcement of adding schools 13 and 14 was just a reminder that the conference has only had 10 member schools for 70 of its 116 years and won't again for the foreseeable future.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi said his school looked "forward as much to the collaboration and interaction we're going to have as institutions as we do to what I know will be really outstanding competition on our field of play."

But make no mistake, the Big Ten was born out of sports, specifically football. A seven-school 1896 meeting at Chicago's Palmer House had Northwestern among those still stinging from a scathing Harper's Weekly critique of college sports abuses, the Tribune reported at the time.

A prohibition on allowing scholarship and fellowship students to compete was shot down. But "a move towards the coordination of Faculty committees" in terms of standards and enforcement passed and the precursor to the Big Ten was born.

Along the way, the conference has added member schools and come to recognize that the Big Ten's image has much to say about how those institutions are perceived. Scandals already are no stranger to the Big Ten. But whether you play in a stadium or on Wall Street, the bigger one gets, the bigger target one becomes.

"Whoever's biggest draws scrutiny," said Arnott, co-author of a research paper, "The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed." "That means politicians, regulators, the general public generally don't root for the biggest. They look to take them down a notch, so it's harder to succeed as the largest. It's also harder to move the dial and move from success to success as you get really big."

Everyone talks about becoming too big to fail, but there's also too big to scale, companies that are unable to capitalize on the efficiencies of their increased size ostensibly because they are so big that they cannot be managed adequately.

"People talk about economies of scale. There are also vast diseconomies of scale, mostly in bureaucracies," Arnott said. "The more people you have involved, the more people you have who feel they have to have their views reflected in whatever's done. So you wind up with innovation by committee."

That's deadly. That's why companies break up, citing the need to get smaller so they can grow.

"If you break up companies into operating entities that are more nimble," Arnott said, "the opportunities to grow are no longer hamstrung by centralized bureaucracies that have to pursue synergies that don't exist."

Size matters in all fields of play. Sometimes smaller is better.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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Flight attendant's husband left gun in bag, attorney says

An American Airlines flight attendant charged with trying to bring a gun onto an airplane at O'Hare International Airport didn't know her husband had left the gun in her bag, her attorney said today.

Sheila A. Schultz, 65, was arrested Friday morning about 9:30 a.m. after the gun was detected in an X-ray machine, police said.

Schultz, of the 1200 block of North Grove Avenue in Palatine, was ordered held today on $10,000 bail after being charged with one felony count of boarding an aircraft with a weapon and one misdemeanor count of having a firearm without a valid gun card.

Schultz was at O’Hare security checkpoint 7A--which directories show is in Terminal 3--when a TSA officer saw the .22 caliber revolver containing live rounds in her carryon bag, according to court documents.

The bag was shared between Schultz and her husband, her attorney, David Studenroth, said today in a hearing before Criminal Court Judge Judge Israel Desierto. Schultz’s husband forgot to take the gun out of the bag after a recent trip to Michigan, according to court documents. Schultz was unaware it was still in there, her attorney, Studenroth said.

Schultz was scheduled to be on a 10:30 a.m. flight to Shanghai, China on Friday.

Schultz has been an AA flight attendant for 44 years, has lived in Palatine for 40 years and has never been arrested, he said.

American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan confirmed Friday that Schultz was a flight attendant for the airline.

Schultz is scheduled to appear in court again on Nov. 30. 

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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“Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik, husband divorcing

NEW YORK (Reuters) – “The Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik and her husband are divorcing after nine years of marriage, she said in a statement on her Facebook page.

Bialik, who starred in the 1990s sitcom “Blossom,” and Michael Stone have two sons together.

“Divorce is terribly sad, painful and incomprehensible for children,” Bialik, 36, said in the statement. “It is not something we have decided lightly.”

Bialik, a proponent of “attachment parenting” who authored a book on the subject that was published in September, said it “played no role” in the couple’s divorce.

Attachment parenting advocates the nurturing of strong bonds between parents and children, which can include extended breast-feeding and parents and children sleeping in the same bed until the children are as old as 7. A controversial Time magazine cover on the subject in May drew strong reactions across the United States.

“The main priority for us now is to make the transition to two loving homes as smooth and painless as possible,” Bialik wrote in the statement, which was posted to her Facebook page on Wednesday. “Our sons deserve parents committed to their growth and health and that’s what we are focusing on.”

“We will be OK,” the statement concludes.

Bialik is a former child star who appeared in the 1980s television series “Webster” and “The Facts of Life” before landing the title role in the coming-of-age television show “Blossom,” which ran from 1991 to 1995. The show was about a smart teenage girl whose parents have divorced and is learning about life.

The actress attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained a doctorate in neuroscience.

She met Michael Stone, a fellow graduate student, in calculus class, according to a description of her wedding she previously posted online.

In her most recent role on CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” Bialik plays Amy Farrah Fowler, a neuroscientist who dates one of the two main stars of the show, the socially inept but brilliant physicist Sheldon Cooper.

(Reporting By Chris Francescani; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Bill Trott)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Walmart protests draw crowds, shoppers largely unfazed

Dozens of local workers, and hundreds nationally, took advantage of Black Friday crowds and camera crews at major retailers like Walmart to call for wage increases.

But there was little evidence that the chanting disrupted holiday shoppers.

Steven Restivo, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores, said the chain had done its "best Black Friday event ever" despite protests organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Chicago and other cities.

At a Walmart in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood on the south side, only one of the store's 500 employees took part in the demonstration, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said. "Almost all the folks you'll see protesting today are not Walmart associates," Restivo said. "I guess you can't believe everything you read in a union press release."

According to the union, protests took place in Miami and Washington, D.C., with additional events planned at Midwestern and Southern stores.

Walmart has so far avoided a union presence, which has become cumbersome for competitors like Jewel-Osco and Dominick's Finer Foods. Those chains have been closing stores as Walmart has expanded locally.

Separately Friday, dozens of members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago and its supporters marched from the Loop to the Magnificent Mile to demand a $15 minimum wage and union contracts for downtown workers. Organized on November 15, the union has about 150 members and has received financial support from Service Employees International Union, Action Now and Stand Up Chicago.

Deborah Sims, marching Friday, said she worked at Macy's for 12 years, eventually making $13 an hour, before losing her job during the recession. She was rehired last holiday season, but at $8.50 an hour, with no benefits.

Sims said she expects retailers to turn to younger, less-experienced workers because "$8.25 an hour is going to look good to them."

Macy's did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Gill, a spokesman for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, called the demand for a $15 minimum wage dangerous "because people are out looking for jobs and it's tough in this economy."

He explained that if retailers were forced to nearly double the starting hourly wage, "you're going to have to cut the number of employees."

Reuters contributed to this story.

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Witnesses chase, help cops catch purse-snatcher on Mag Mile

Strong-arm robbery charges have been filed against a purse snatcher who allegedly pushed a woman to the ground on the Mag Mile before being chased down and apprehended by two Good Samaritans, police said.

Richard D. Mendoza, 31, of the 1600 block of North Talman Avenue was charged this afternoon with strong-arm robbery and battery. Police said he is on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet at the time of the robbery.

The incident happened at about 8:19 a.m. when a 44-year-old woman was walking on the side walk eastbound on Erie Street when the purse snatcher approached her from behind, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Robert Perez.

The man, later identified as Mendoza, began choking her and grabbing her purse as the woman began struggling against him, Perez said. As he struggled for the woman's purse he knocked her to the ground, Perez said.

As they continued struggling, Mendoza kicked her several times and took the purse, Perez said.

As the incident was ending, two men who witnessed the attack ran after Mendoza as police were being called, Perez said.

He ran eastbound on Erie Street and threw the purse into a nearby alley, Perez said.

The men then saw Mendoza get into a taxi at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Erie Street, police said.

As one of the Good Samaritans prevented the taxi from moving, the other man flagged down a passing police car that was responding to the robbery.

Mendoza was taken out of the taxi cab and brought back to where the incident happened and he was identified as the attacker. The woman's purse was retrieved, Perez said.

The woman was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where her condition had stabilized, Perez said. The woman sustained bruising and swelling to her face and back of her head, Perez said.

Mendoza has 14 prior arrests and four prior convictions: one for armed robbery, one for strong-arm robbery and two residential burglaries, police said.

csadovi@tribune.com

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Fired colleague of UBS rogue trader Adoboli opens betting site

LONDON (Reuters) – A former senior trader at UBS, sacked for failing to prevent colleague Kweku Adoboli from perpetrating the biggest fraud in British history, has set up a gambling website.

In a decision likely to be seized upon by critics who say traders have often made casino-style bets, John Hughes started his gambling firm even though his website said his old job had “removed all sense of optimism from his character”.

Adoboli, his former subordinate now serving seven years in jail for running up losses of $ 2.3 billion, argued during his trial that his own behavior was the result of a risky trading culture encouraged by senior colleagues, and his lawyers alleged that Hughes had played a major role in “off-book” trading.

Hughes admitted he had known of Adoboli’s scheme to hide his giant losses and that he had booked several fictitious trades himself, but denied knowledge of some of Adoboli’s biggest multi-billion dollar trades.

Hughes said he had chosen to call his new gambling website ‘BetsofMates’, a play on the expression “Best of Mates”.

That may grate with Adoboli who complained that his colleagues, including Hughes, had “sold me down the river” after a meeting at which he said it was decided he alone would carry the can for the huge losses.

Hughes and the others said they had no memory of such a meeting.

“We’re not a standard bookie,” Hughes said of his new website, which enables users to play against each other in leagues, with each player placing bets of between two and 200 pounds.

“We facilitate competition. The emphasis is a lot more on competition than yield enhancement,” he told Reuters on Thursday.

The former senior trader on the Exchange Traded Funds desk at UBS in London said Adoboli’s conviction was “just incredibly sad”. He declined to comment further.

Despite a large salary and bonus, Adoboli was himself an avid gambler and lost 123,000 pounds ($ 200,000) on spread-betting in the year before his arrest.

One prosecutor accused him of being addicted to gambling to which Adoboli countered that spread-betting was common among City traders “like a taxi driver driving his own taxi home”.

Hughes’ profile on his new firm’s website says that “seven years in the City (had) removed all sense of optimism from his character, and made him absurdly superstitious.”

He told Reuters such feelings had arisen “sitting there watching the markets for seven years and watching different news hit the tapes and obviously the last seven years haven’t been the easiest in the financial markets.”

Britain’s Gambling Commission granted a license to his pool betting company ‘Bets of Mates Limited’, which is registered to an East London address, in September 2012, two months before Adoboli was convicted.

(Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Halle Berry’s ex headed to court after Thanksgiving brawl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The father of Halle Berry‘s daughter is headed to court after he was arrested following a fistfight with her fiancé outside the Oscar winning actress’ Los Angeles home on Thanksgiving, police said.

Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, 37, was later released on $ 20,000 bail after being charged with misdemeanor battery following the punch-up with Berry’s fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, 46, in the driveway of her house on Thursday.

The altercation occurred during a custodial hand-off involving Berry’s 4-year-old daughter with Aubry, Nahla, according to Los Angeles police officer Julie Boyer.

Following the scuffle, Aubry and Martinez were both taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with “non-life-threatening injuries,” Boyer said. Aubry is due to appear in court on December 13.

Berry, 46, who won a best actress Oscar for her role in 2001 film “Monster’s Ball,” has been embroiled in a bitter custody battle with Aubry since they broke up in April 2010. Earlier this month, a judge denied Berry’s request to move to France with Nahla.

Berry and Martinez met while filming the movie “Dark Tide.” They announced their engagement in March.

A judge has since issued an emergency protective order requiring Aubry to stay at least 100 yards (meters) from Berry, their daughter and Martinez, according to celebrity website, TMZ.com.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Inquiry Sought in Death in Ireland After Abortion Was Denied

DUBLIN — India’s ambassador here has agreed to ask Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland for an independent inquiry into the death of an Indian-born woman last month after doctors refused to perform an abortion when she was having a miscarriage, the lawyer representing the woman’s husband said Thursday.

The lawyer, Gerard O’Donnell, also said crucial information was missing from the files he had received from the Irish Health Service Executive about the death of the woman, Savita Halappanavar, including any mention of her requests for an abortion after she learned that the fetus would not survive.

The death of Dr. Halappanavar, 31, a dentist who lived near Galway, has focused global attention on the Irish ban on abortion.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar, has refused to cooperate with an investigation being conducted by the Irish health agency. “I have seen the way my wife was treated in the hospital, so I have no confidence that the H.S.E. will do justice,” he said in an interview on Wednesday night on RTE, the state television broadcaster. “Basically, I don’t have any confidence in the H.S.E.”

In a tense debate in the Irish Parliament on Wednesday evening, Robert Dowds of the Labour Party said Dr. Halappanavar’s death had forced politicians “to confront an issue we have dodged for much too long,” partly because so many Irish women travel to Britain for abortions.

“The reality is that if Britain wasn’t on our doorstep, we would have had to introduce abortion legislation years ago to avoid women dying in back-street abortions,” he said.

After the debate, the Parliament voted 88 to 53 against a motion introduced by the opposition Sinn Fein party calling on the government to allow abortions when women’s lives are in danger and to protect doctors who perform such procedures.

The Irish president, Michael D. Higgins — who is restricted by the Constitution from getting involved in political matters — also made a rare foray into a political debate on Wednesday, saying any inquiry must meet the needs of the Halappanavar family as well as the government.

In 1992, the Irish Supreme Court interpreted the current law to mean that abortion should be allowed in circumstances where there was “a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother,” including the threat of suicide. But that ruling has never been codified into law.

“The current situation is like a sword of Damocles hanging over us,” Dr. Peter Boylan, of the Irish Institute of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told RTE last week. “If we do something with a good intention, but it turns out to be illegal, the consequences are extremely serious for medical practitioners.”

Dr. Ruth Cullen, who has campaigned against abortion, said that any legislation to codify the Supreme Court ruling would be tantamount to allowing abortion on demand and that Dr. Halappanavar’s death should not be used to make that change.

Dr. Halappanavar contracted a bacterial blood infection, septicemia, and died Oct. 28, a week after she was admitted to Galway University Hospital with severe back pains. She was 17 weeks pregnant but having a miscarriage and was told that the fetus — a girl — would not survive. Her husband said she asked several times for an abortion but was informed that under Irish law it would be illegal while there was a fetal heartbeat, because “this is a Catholic country.”

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Chicago shopping frenzy gets early start

Ambitious holiday shoppers skipped dessert on Thanksgiving to get a good spot in line for this Black Friday. (Posted Nov. 23rd, 2012)

Massive crowds negotiated the escalators and the revolving door at Water Tower Place Friday afternoon.

Megan Rohee, 40, was there with her Bay City, Mich., family for their annual Black Friday shopping adventure.

They'd done Walmart the night before and hit Kmart and Target Friday morning.

Still, she said much of Friday was about activity as opposed to spending.

"It's more just people watching. We're doing some shopping, but we don't have a ton of stuff.

"We're two teachers and we are tight, tight, tight," she said.

Still, her family plans to spend a bit more this year.

"It's better than last year. Our insurance went up last year, and we hadn't gotten acclimated to it. This year, we're accustomed to it."

Craig Lightfoot and John Livingston III were on a bag hunt downtown.

In Chicago for a radiology conference, the Melbourne, Austrailia, duo began shopping at 9 a.m.

"We're chasing bags for the wives," Lightfoot said.

He plans to shell out more money for gifts this year.

"The kids are getting older and I'm spending more," he said.

Livingston, who'd picked up handbags for his daughter at Barney's and was scouting for more for his wife, said the family's shopping budget is out of his hands.

"My wife sets the budget from the other side of the world," Livingston said.  "At this point, it's infinite."

The Henri Bendel handbag and accessory store offered doorbusters this year to drive traffic.

"We wanted to see if we could get a lift in our business," store manager Kristen Koch said. "We found it drove a lot of self purchases.

"It seem like everyone is looking for the best deal," Koch said. "They might be spending the same amount as last year, but they're getting more."

Mary Jane and Steve Day, both 62 and from Peoria,y strategized for their Black Friday excursion to Woodfield Mall after spending Thanksgiving with family in Rolling Meadows.

"She woke me up 6:52 (a.m.), " he said.

Looking for luggage, the Days started by shopping online, then called stores to buy over the phone. The first physical stop for the retirees wasn't until 9 a.m. at the Macy's store.

"This isn't bad," said Steve Day. "There's not that many people in the streets."

And though the Macy's store had been opened since 12 a.m., Mary Jane Day said: "We're too old to get up that early."

For Shelly Wright's first Black Friday experience, she and friend Megan Valentine got to the mall at 6:30 a.m. The Chicago women dropped a load of bags at the car three hours later, and said they would probably shop until lunch time.

Wright, 32, moved to the country three years ago from her native Canterbury, England. She said with a laugh: "This is kind of a grand, cultural experience."

Valentine, 28, said she's been Black Friday shopping for years. She said sales were better last year than this, though the crowds were more manageable.

"I expected it to be a lot worse but we weren't the first drove of people," Valentine said. "A lot of stores staggered their open times."

The frenzy is not created equal for all retailers.

Even if they don't have specials or promotions, small and independent businesses can be subject to a shopping center's early opening hours.

At Woodfield, Candy World owner Parul Patel manned her shop alone starting at midnight Friday without any specials.

The store's customer base is made up of children and teenagers, and the merchandise is at a low price point. This means business was normal, if not slow during some parts of the night, Patel said.

To fill some of the time, she read a newspaper, topped off candy containers and people-watched. The mall was busier than usual, but Patel said: "Nobody is here, you can see."

This year was the first mandatory 12 a.m. opening for the metro area's largest shopping center. Of Woodfield Mall's nearly 300 businesses across 2.2 million square feet, only about 20 stores didn't open at that time, according to the  mall's general manager, Marc Strich.

Retailers and customers had asked for the early hours, Strich said. Last year, the mall held a "volunteer" midnight opening, and about 20 stores participated.

As is typical, stores other than big-box retailer are required to be open when the mall is, Strich said, though he declined to talk about whether there were any fined or punishments for those that aren't.

Sears opened Thursday at 8 p.m., while Nordstrom's didn't open until 9 a.m. Friday, Strich said.

Amanda Lewkowicz, the store manager at PJ's Avon Beauty Center, said it didn't initially want to open at midnight after disappointing sales last year.

"We didn't want to be open at midnight because it didn't pick up until 5 a.m. last year," Lewkowicz said. "We felt it didn't benefit us."

The store is a rare brick-and-mortar outlet for Avon beauty products, which is typically sold through catalogs and sales representatives. That "destination" business model for PJ's Avon means customers typically seek them out, Lewkowicz said.

Being independently owned also requires its own promotional efforts, which included emailing its customer list and cold-calling others.

"(Other stores) do commercial advertising. We can only do so much," Lewkowicz said.

Jessica Foch had only sold one pack of cigarettes by noon at the smoke shop on Division Street in Wicker Park, in spite of her boss's insistence that a Black Friday special on hookahs would bring in throngs of shoppers.

The 24-year-old store manabger admitted that 25 percent off a $300 hookah is a pretty big discount but said she didn't expect to see them fly off the shelf.

"People don't go to little shops like this on Black Friday. They go to Target and Kmart," she said.

With pink hair, sparkly black nail polish and fingerless gloves, Foch said she once worked for Wal-Mart and hates the way people treat each other on Black Friday

She plans to spend at least $100 on her boyfriend and give generously to friends. But she won't be shopping today.

"I know somebody who got punched in the face for a toaster," she said, "a toaster."

The line may seem impressive outside St. Alfred's -- a streetwear clothier in Wicker Park -- but that's because the tiny shop is only letting in one person at a time, apparently to avoid a run on the Michael Jordan sneakers out Friday.

"But we don't even want them," said Armin Hajdarovic, 17, bundled up outside the store with a half a dozen friends as it began to snow.

The crew of Northsiders was waiting to get inside to buy shirts at 20 percent off.

Asked who they were shopping for, the group said: themselves, of course.

By 9:30 a.m. on Black Friday, still a half hour before Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard would open on any other weekday, Santa was in his green armchair and lines had queued at Caribou Coffee for those refueling, some after an entire night of shopping.

At the food court, three sisters sipped from cartons of orange juice, their daughters having awakened them hours before dawn for a 4 a.m. excursion. One, Patricia Baker, 54, of Maywood, had made an 8 p.m. jaunt to Target Thursday and a midnight run to Anna's Linens.

Now, she and her sisters, Donna Holliday, 48, of Bellwood, and Carolyn Baker, 56, of Lombard, and their daughters had spread their J.C. Penney, Forever 21, Victoria's Secret and Bath and  Body Works bags across several tables, taking a break before heading to Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora.

The sisters hadn't been able to get together for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, so shopping signified bonding time.

"I'm just hanging with my sisters and nieces," said Holliday. "Just hangin'."

Baker added that she lets her daughter, Jahanna Baker, 19, and nieces, Azia and Amber Welch, both 17, do most of the shopping while she and her sisters chat at the follow. 

"My income has become more secure," said Carolyn, a nurse. "The fear has died down. My work hours are more steady." She plans to spend a couple thousand dollars more this year, including a new stove she bought for herself.

Holliday, too, says she has been working more hours this year and plans to spend a couple  hundred dollars more .

"I buy what I like," she said, "as long as I'm not broke."

At the courtyard in front of Von Maur at Yorktown, three generations of shoppers sat on a bench with bags from the Gap, Justice, Claire's and Aeropostale around their feet.

Kathy Zuehlke, 69, had driven in from Rantoul, in central Illinois, to go shopping with her daughter, Lisa Salgado, 43, and granddaughter Alicia Salgado, 14, both of Rockford.

It was the first time Alicia had joined the decade-long tradition, which Kathy views as "a chance to get together because we're all spread out across Illinois."

They followed a system, scouring the circulars from three newspapers before plotting a course that took them to Target on Thanksgiving evening, back at a relative's house to nap for a few hours and on to Kohl's, Best Buy, Toys "R" Us and Yorktown.

They had budgeted about as much for gifts this year as the last, about $300 to $500 for Lisa and $800 to $900 for Kathy, who says she has several grandchildren to spoil.

They pay in cash, however, so as not to overspend.  The deals they snagged on Black Friday, including 60 percent off most apparel, helped them stay within budget, too.

In Chicago's rapidly gentrifying Logan square neighborhood, most shops and restaurants were closed Black Friday, but not Torres-Omar Jewelry.

The tiny shop, near the Blue Line stop, was offering double discounts on watches.

Bob Garza -- dressed as Santa Claus and handing out fliers for the jewelry store and candy canes as CTA riders exited the train station -- said he usually delivers groceries for Mariano's but the shop is closed through the weekend so he got out his Santa outfit to make a little extra cash.

Tomorrow, Santa will be handing out Chamber of Commerce fliers on Belmont.

"The economy is bad right now," he said. "There's work out there. You just have to create it."

Across the street at the jewelry store, Jose Torres, the store's owner, said they've been in the same location since 1980 and stay open Black Friday because their regular customers expect it.

"We're always open," he said. The store was quiet, but Torres said traffic to the store looked better than last year.

Just before 7 a.m. the door busters and the crowds had dwindled at the Target in Schaumburg. Store leader Aaron Stephenson said that while the store was still busy, the crowd had died down a bit. "This is what I consider normal busy for a weekend," said Stephenson.

This is the Minneapolis-based Target's first year offering staggered door busters, the first at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, when the store opened and the second, at 4 a.m. Friday. Beyond consumer electronics, housewares had been popular according to Stephenson and by early morning some had also disappeared, including a Dyson Vacuum, a Farberware 18-piece cook set and a Pyrex 20-piece set.

The stack of PlayStation 3 and XBox 360's also were gone and toys, including Legos, he said, flew off the shelves. There are plenty of still good deals, Stephenson added. "We still have quite a few big TVs," he said.

In a form of subtle protest, several people who roamed Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard as early as 4 a.m. started buying when they usually did -- on Friday morning -- and refused to give into retailers that opened their doors on Thursday evening.

"I boycotted anything midnight or earlier," said Chrissy Wojdyla, 29, of Downers Grove. "I will not shop there. I think it's ruining Thanksgiving tradition and infringing on my family." Moving Black Friday hours up to Thanksgiving, she added, "takes people away from their families." 

Instead, Wojdyla, her sister, Mary Steele, 26, and their mother, Patti Wojdyla, 54, dedicated their Thanksgiving Day to family and food, withholding themselves from any kind of shopping until they met at Yorktown at 4 a.m. Friday.

"Four a.m. is early enough!," said Patti, of Glen Ellyn. "Why would anyone want to do it on Thanksgiving evening? You're full. You're tired."

Steele, also of Glen Ellyn, said that caring for her young kids all day had made Thanksgiving too tiring to shop. 

Plus, she said, "when you start on Thanksgiving Day, it's not even Black Friday. We enjoy our 4 a.m. Friday tradition."

So they all got sleep on Thursday, ranging from 1 to 6 hours , and woke up to glam themselves out with glitter, tiaras and garland necklaces for their early morning of shopping. Steele wore a paper crown that read "Happy Holidays." |

For their efforts to keep with Yorktown's "bling" theme, Lynette Steinhauser, the assistant marketing director at the mall, rewarded them with $10 gift cards to Von Maur, which prompted a profusion of delighted thank-yous. 

Outside of J.C. Penney, Ramiro Carrizales, 44, waited with his wife, Lorena Carrizales, 40, in a seven-people-deep crowd for the store to open at 6 a.m.

They were looking for good clothing deals for their kids, specifically Mickey Mouse-themed items, but the couple, who lives in Forest Park, adamantly stuck to early Friday morning shopping hours instead of venturing out on Thursday evening. 

On Thanksgiving, said Ramiro, "I wanted to spend time with family. I didn't want to go out."

Post-Thanksgiving shopping also is a ritual for Elk Grove's Krys Slattery, Chris Duncker and Gina Wirth -- a decade-long tradition among friends.

Each year, they finish Thanksgiving dinner with their families and embark upon a 12-hour pilgrimage to knock-out the bulk of the Christmas shopping by visiting several stores in and around Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. They power-up with coffee and breakfast at Panera and then wind-down the spree at Olive Garden for lunch. 

"We're constantly laughing," said Duncker.  "It's not just about the deals for us really, It's all about the experience, we love it," added Wirth. 

On Thanksgiving night they were in the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg.  Each with carts, a list and Target's "door buster" circular holding folded in their hands. All three giggled and called out to each other, squealing with delight when they spied a good deal.

After picking-up some blue sequined slippers for her teenage daughter, Slattery held them up for Wirth and Duncker to inspect.  "Do you think she'll like these?" she said.

This year Slattery was lucky. Target was opening earlier than ever -- at 9 p.m. so her mother cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

The trio weren't alone, the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg was swarmed, many pushing carts piled high with merchandise, from 50-inch televisions, to game consoles, tablet computers, MP3 players, apparel and cameras, which manager Brett Thiele said sold out in an hour.

The scene was similar at Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard. 

Laura Maxey and six of her closest friends shrieked when they saw the black bags. They had carved out a spot in front of the information booth at Yorktown, standing for 5 1/2 hours at the head of a 250-person line, until the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Friday and the staff began handing out goodie bags filled with multicolored totes and $10 gift cards to stores throughout the mall.

"We pretty much just slept over at the mall," said Laura, 14, of Lombard. "We wanted to be first."

Their parents had dropped the friends, plus two older brothers, off at the mall shortly before midnight, and they rushed to the booth to claim their spots -- only the first 200 people in line would receive gift bags, with another 50 turned away -- before taking turns to embark on a shopping rotation that included Victoria's Secret, American Eagle and PacSun. At Charlotte Russe, they picked up $15 jeans.

The friends said they were at the mall for the joy, the deals and the once-a-year feel of Black Friday, and they were hardly the only ones caught up in the retail frenzy.

"I got a suitcase thrown at my head!" said Melanie Malczewski, 14, of Lombard, recalling her experience at Victoria's Secret, though she was smiling broadly at the memory later that morning.

Lynette Steinhauser, assistant marketing director at Yorktown, said that this, her 14th Black Friday at the mall, "is the busiest it's ever been." About half of the stores had been open since midnight, she said, with nearly all the rest the turning on their lights when the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Steinhauser compared the foot traffic at 5: 30 a.m. on Black Friday to what it feels like on a Saturday afternoon.

"Everyone is in a really happy mood," she said. "And festive!"

Black Friday, which for years kicked-off the holiday shopping season for retailers and consumers, has bled into Thanksgiving, with retailers including Target, Sears and Toys R US opening on Thursday night aiming to boost their bottom lines by enticing consumers to shop early and often.  

Holiday shopping is crucial for retailers -- it accounts for up to 40 percent of their yearly sales. That's why it's called "Black Friday" as for years they've used the day to go from red to black -- or turn a profit.  

This year, retail watchers are expecting holiday shoppers to oblige.  Consumers are expected to spend, on average, $586.1 billion this year on gifts for friends and family, just over a 4 percent increase from last year. Experts are saying this pick-up in spending is conservative, but a glimpse at popular hotspots for early Black Friday shopping, it wasn't apparent.  

This year a handful opened earlier than ever, Walmart set an 8 p.m. opening and Sears followed suit.  Target opted for an opening scheduled an hour later at 9 pm.

Despite some criticism around the increasingly early open times, shoppers in Schaumburg were out in full-force last night.  A Deloitte survey found that 60 percent of consumers plan to shop over Thanksgiving weekend, aiming to take part in sales that offer merchandise at prices the dip below 50 percent off. 

Experts said that this year, as in most years, low-priced flat screen televisions would move fast.  So would deeply discounted Android-powered tablet computers. 

The line to get into the Sears at Woodfield Mall stretched along the building by 7 p.m., an hour before opening time.  

Manager April Buehler said the line outside the store looked larger than last year, and about a mile away at Target, Thiele said this year the store was filled with more families, instead of the hardcore, deal-hunter that typically shows up when the store opens early on Friday morning.  "It's a lot more casual shopper, which I'm excited about," said Thiele. "It's not necessarily people that had to get up super early and be dedicated, just people going out with families. Grandparents and grandkids," he said. 

Carol and Russel Freitas fall into the deal-hunter category.  It's date night for the Palatine couple of 26 years when they head out to shop each year after dinner, leaving their two teenaged sons behind to tackle the stores.  They said they love it.

They waited patiently in line for more than an hour, hoping to snag one of Sears' hot door busters, a 32-inch flat screen for less than $100. 

As it turns out, they waited in vain.  By the time the store opened, they were in the first third of the line, but the Sears employee had run out of TV vouchers when she got to the Freitas' in line.  "It's okay," said Carol Freitas, "There's other stuff on our list, we're going to head to the boys' department to get shirts for my son."

Shortly before Sears opened, about 12 feet away from the Freitas, there was a small, but growing crowd of suspected "line jumpers,"  who stood about 12 feet away staring at the line.

At close to 9:30 at Target, some shoppers could be seen pushing carts stockpiled with 32 inch flat screen for $147.  Alex Gackle  from Fargo, N.D., left his grandmother's dinner with his dad and brother-in-law to buy  another of the Minneapolis-based retailer's most sought-after deals: They bought  four televisions. One for himself, another for his grandmother, one for her caretaker and the fourth for his father.  They waited in line for more than an hour and things were calm, said Gackle.  That changed when Target's doors opened, said Gackle. "That's when people started getting crazy and rushing toward things."

By 10:30 a long line of shoppers were still waiting to get inside the Toys R Us in Schaumburg.  Customers said they were told that shoppers would be allowed in the store every 10 minutes in increments of 50.

After 10 p.m. the temperature had dropped and Laura Saul stood in a sweater with her two daughters and their cousin to get into Toys R Us.  The item of the evening -- "Monster High" dolls for her 10-year-old daughter, Emily.  She pointed to Emily and said, giggling, "She conned us to do this."  Saul's old daughter, Lauren, who stood nearby, was not in such good spirits, "I could be sleeping," she said.

The trio from Elk Grove shopping at Target said over the years they've seen it all -- fights and shoving matches.  As the 10 p.m. hour approached at Target, they thought things were pretty calm.  At Target People get angry, but this is fun for us," said Wirth.  "Even if we don't get what we want, we don't care."

Sally Ho, Julie Wernau and Erin Chan Ding contributed to this story.

crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter: @corilyns

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