Presidents Day sales bring holiday weekend crowds to downtown Bend businesses

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ)-- Many shoppers swept the streets of downtown Bend this Presidents Day weekend, looking for bargains -- and finding them.

“It’s been pretty good -- it’s definitely a lot busier," Evrgreen Clothing supervisor Denali Heinlein said Monday. "Friday was a little bit slower, because everybody was coming into town for the holidays, but we’ve been doing great sales the last couple of days. Today is our last day of our sale, actually.”

Along with Evrgreen Clothing, Lone Crow Bungalow and Leapin' Lizards Toy Co. say they were prepared for the extra business.

“It has been very very busy, but it’s a good thing," Lone Crow Bungalow Store Manager Cecilia Siauw said. "It’s very much expected with the long weekend. It seems like there’s a lot of families out enjoying themselves.”

Leapin' Lizards Toy Co. Customer Service Specialist Molly Hungerford said, "It’s been an awesome busy weekend. I’d say mostly tourists- a lot of people shopping for birthday presents."

The stores also had some hot sellers.

Lone Crow's Siauw said, “We have a ton of cookbooks here, some of them are Pacific Northwest authors. Our Alpine cooking book is really popular. It has some ski maps of Switzerland, Italy, and the French Alps here. We even have a Joshua McFadden book. He’s a James Beard Award-winning author, too.”

Heinlein said, “I would say shorts, dresses, and nice summer tops.”

Hungerford said, “Magna-Tiles are wildly popular, really from ages 2 1/2 to -- I have an almost 8-year-old that’s really into them. They’re fun, magnetic building blocks.”

Being the last big holiday weekend of winter, families came to Central Oregon not just to shop, but to ski and snowboard, too.