Oh, the joys of holiday shopping: the eve of Christmas Eve, Air Jordans and the sting of pepper spray in the eye.

When retailers around the country put the new retro Nike Air Jordan basketball shoe on sale Friday, they were hoping for a modest last-minute boost two days before Christmas. What they got instead was a surge of shoppers so intent on buying a pair of the $180 shoes that in at least a dozen cities the police had to be summoned, and in a few cases, arrests were made.

In Charlotte, N.C., shoppers smashed glass doors to get to the sneakers. In suburban Atlanta, the police made four arrests when a crowd broke down a door to get into a store before it opened. In Richmond, Calif., a man fired a single gunshot in the air just after a mall opened. In Louisville, officers had to stop fights that popped up among a crowd of waiting shoppers. And in a suburb of Seattle, the police used pepper spray.