So here we are, the day after Thanksgiving, the much-hyped “Black Friday” and “the biggest shopping day of the year”. Whatever you call it, today’s the day American humanity as a whole starts to freak out hard about what to get each other for holiday gifts. Maybe you’re among this freaked-out populace, and are at this very minute considering throwing yourself at some overcrowded mall to battle it out with your frenzied fellow citizens.

Don’t be stupid.

On December 8, all your shopping questions will be answered by the arrival of the 2005 Strangercrombie Gift Catalog, hitting the streets in that week’s issue of The Stranger. Once the catalog has landed, we’ll commence the Strangercrombie Gift Auction, where in you’ll be able to bid on each and every one of the amazing Strangercrombie gift packages through the Stranger website.

For those unfamiliar with Strangercrombie: It started in 2002, when we were obsessed with the soft-porn allure of Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs. Anxious for a reason to photograph hot folks in their underpants, we invented the first Strangercrombie Gift Catalog, featuring the aforementioned hot folks posing with a bevy of thrown-together gift packages, which we decided to auction over eBay and give the profits to local hunger-fighting do-gooders Northwest Harvest. To our great surprise, we raised $6000, and Strangercrombie’s been a growing institution ever since, netting $15K in 2003, and $30K in 2004.

And now we come to 2005, which is sure to bring the biggest Strangercrombie yet. As the stature of the event has grown, so has the quality of the auctioned gifts—where we once auctioned off a videotape of Brad Steinbacher eating a sandwich, we were soon offering such ass-kicking treats as a listening party for your band’s demo with Sub Pop executives and shopping sprees at Butch Blum, not to mention all the ridiculous and hilarious shit without which Strangercrombie wouldn’t be Strangercrombie.

Like I said, this year will bring a feast of amazing auction items (among the already-present highlights: SIFF passes, X Boxes, and chartered rock-star bus trip to the Northwest’s “Sin City”—Portland.) For a full run-down of items, check the Dec. 8 issue, and get ready to start your bidding….

Strangercrombie 2005: Because people don’t shoot you when you shop on your computer.â„¢