Our own Emily Chasan visited two bankrupt retailers — Circuit City and Tweeter etc– in Burlington, Massachusetts, on Black Friday. She sent photos and this report:

Circuit City and Tweeter sit kitty-corner from each other where Middlesex Turnpike intersects with I-95 and were telling different tales on Black Friday.

Circuit City looked almost the picture of a healthy retailer, despite its bankrupt status. Tweeter, just nine days from closing for good, was sparsely stocked and looked almost like a warehouse.

It took six laps around the Circuit City parking lot to find a spot and customers got creative by parking on the lawn and sidewalk. The store was more crowded than any other retailer we visited that day, except the Apple store.

Circuit City, the second-largest U.S. specialty electronics chain, filed for Chapter 11 protection on November 10. It is closing 155 domestic stores, or more than one-fifth of its retail base, and plans to emerge from bankruptcy restructuring in the first half of 2009.

Shoppers said they saw newspaper flyers and were enticed by Circuit City’s six-hour specials.

John Laquidara, from North Billerica, Massachusetts, was among the shoppers who turned out and said he was not concerned about buying items at bankrupt retailers.

“There are a lot of stores in that kind of shape, and usually the kinds of things I buy don’t need to be returned,” Laquidara said.

Signs outside the Tweeter store advertised sale prices of 40 to 70 percent off. Inside the store we found equal numbers of shoppers and employees.

The only remaining items for sale were flat-panel TV display models, cables and speaker systems — all of which were steeply marked down. A flat panel that was once priced at almost $3400 was being offered for just $892.

Will you shop at a bankrupt retailer this holiday?