@Yeshuasdaughter, you know what song I have in my head when I see this thread title...
"The days are much too bright" one of the Smashing Pumpkins more unusual songs, the Twilight to Starlight half of that album is kinda unusual all round!
I prefer to go out when there are less people around. I prefer shopping at night when I can relax and go at my own pace. There's a weird trait that I've noticed a lot of people have, which is if they see someone's attention drawn to something they immediately want to jump in to see what has you so interested.
It's a theory I have tested out many times by randomly staring intensely at some item on a shop shelf and sure enough, the person that has been crowding me for the last 30 minutes will appear to come and breathe down my neck.
Sometimes it's been quite amusing. I used to go to car boot sales (probably known as swap meets in the US). There was always this guy that would follow me around trying to use me as his I suppose, "bargain metal detector". If he wasn't interested in what I was looking at he would loom over me or start getting uncomfortably close to push me on to the next stall.
So to put him off I started making a big fuss over junk. I would pretend I was super interested in something and then put it down. I'd ask about the price etc then say "I will have a think about it..." then shuffle away. Out of the corner of my eye, I would see him enthusiastically pick up said junk and hand over his cash. After doing this a couple of times he came stomping up to me shouting about how disgraceful it was that I had mislead him!
I told him that I couldn't remember being employed as his assistant. He went beetroot red and stomped off. He never bothered me again after that. Cheeky sod!
I tend to find this happens less when there's fewer people around. Unfortunately where I live there's not much in the way of visible stars but it's quite nice at I suppose "Twilight".
I don't know if many other people experience people doing this but it does seem quite a few people fear missing out on whatever weird little doodad that I've spotted in Lidl.