Capital Binge

Shortly before noon one day last week, a young man named Mickey Margoles posted himself outside the door of a large radio store at the corner of 11th and F Streets in downtown Washington. There he sat, or stood, throughout the day and night, while others queued up. Margoles was provided with coffee, sandwiches and a sleeping bag by fraternity brothers from George Washington University. When the store opened at 7 a.m. the following day, Margoles darted in, gave a clerk $57 and got a 16-in. demonstrator console television set (normal price: $199) for Phi Sigma Kappa's fraternity house.

It was the capital's annual Washington's Birthday bargain binge, which was started by the Mode men's shop in 1919. Now almost all stores take part. Like Mickey Margoles, other Washingtonians had waited in nightlong vigils to get reconditioned typewriters for 99^, toasters, waffle irons and percolators (used) for 9^ each, a $500 Persian lamb coat for $15, reconditioned washing machines for $9. In nearby Alexandria a 1939 Plymouth went for 89^. A Mrs. E. M. Schott came from Youngstown, Ohio to buy two fur pieces, one a silver-blue mink scarf (price: $10).

By mid-morning Friday, the crowd at Zlotnick the Furrier's was so thick that a policeman was called. He ended up buying his wife a bargain fur coat ($39). At Hecht's, one of the biggest downtown department stores, an estimated 8,000 bargain hunters crammed in during the first 15 minutes after opening, driving the buyer in the kitchen furniture department right up on top of a dinette table.

Stores had heralded their generosity with corny ads, such as "Ties--a buck a throw" (accompanied by a picture of George Washington heaving a silver dollar across the Potomac). Most stores offered only a small number of real buys, used them as decoys to unload trade-ins, old models, other slow-moving stock. Even so, some merchants said that sales, as usual, were twice those of any other day in the year. The Mode men's shop reported it took in $8,500, triple usual sales. Nevertheless, Proprietor Walter Nordlinger viewed the whole affair darkly: "It's getting too big. It's becoming a monster that some day may destroy all of us."

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