Chicago-area shoppers continue Black Friday shopping tradition

The days of parents stampeding through toy stores on Black Friday, elbowing one another to grab Cabbage Patch Kids, are long gone, thanks to the advent of online shopping and a longer holiday shopping season.

But Black Friday is far from dead. This year, crowds of shoppers headed to Chicago area malls and stores on Friday morning, kicking off what’s expected to be a record-setting — if more civilized — holiday weekend of shopping.

An estimated 182 million people are expected to shop in stores and online this long weekend, from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, the highest number of estimated shoppers since the National Retail Federation began tracking the data in 2017.

Black Friday was expected to be the busiest of those shopping days, with many people still eager to go to real-life, brick-and-mortar stores.

By 8 a.m. Friday, the massive Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg wasn’t crazy crowded, but it was hopping. Several stores, including Pandora, the Lego Store and Akira, already…