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Despite the dreary weather, people still gathered downtown Friday evening for this year’s first Sip ‘n Shop event. This year had an additional twist to the event, with participating businesses offering discounts to customers who donated school supplies. City special events coordinator Randee Eubanks previously told the Post-Searchlight that the idea was “to help teachers get ready to go back to school,” with the donated supplies going to Decatur County schools.

“We’re all about anything to remind people to do their back-to-school shopping here, locally, so we hope it was a good event for that, as well as for our local teachers.” She continued, “There were a lot of people out and about shopping, eating, it seemed to bring out an unusually large crowd for Friday night downtown… On Friday night we always have a nice crowd downtown, but they’re all eating, you know they’re at Diablo’s, or Sio’s, or the American, the Brewery, but it attracted even more people because these shops were open until 8:30.”

Chan Strickland with The Farmer’s Wife spoke about the evening. “We had a good turnout of shoppers, and we had great donations,” she said. “We did see, as far as the time, traditionally speaking, on a Friday evening around 5:30, things start slowing down, but of course this time because of the special event, things were picking up. And we had people shopping all the way up until 8:30.” She concluded, “We appreciate all the attention to the growth in downtown.”

The next Sip n Shop is scheduled for August 25.