Crazy Days will be hosted in downtown Ponca City from July 29 to July 31. Crazy Days is a three-day retail shopping event where more than 20 downtown merchants will advertise “crazy” sales.

Information about those sales can be found at Ponca City Main Street’s Facebook page.

“It’s great for the merchants because all they have to do is tell us what they want to do and we go through the work of creating the graphics and putting it on our platform,” said Maci Heppel, Executive Director of the Ponca City Main Street. “We want to make it very easy for them because [Crazy Days] is one of their biggest shopping days of the year.”

The purpose of Crazy Days is to showcase the historic downtown area of Ponca City and to serve as a reminder to the community about the various local businesses available in the downtown district and to help those businesses thrive.

Heppel wants this year’s Crazy Days to be able to help local businesses that had a difficult year during the 2020 pandemic and encourages everyone to shop local.

“Our merchants just had such a hard year with going through COVID and getting creative on how to still sell their products,” said Heppel. “We really want this Crazy Days to be something that’s beneficial to them and a nice push for their retail profit.”

The Crazy Days Street Party will be on Friday, July 30 and has events for the entire family downtown with face painting provided by the RecPlex, various food trucks, bounce houses, putting lanes for disc golf by Flight Path Disc Golf Shop, a cash bar with wine and beer options provided by Rusty Barrell, and live music from the Spurs & Whiskey band from 5 pm to 9 pm.

The Ponca City Main Street will collaborate with the Ponca City Art Association (PCAA) to have “The Grand Chalk-Off” where artists of all ages, amateur and professional alike, will compete in a sidewalk chalk competition. There will be $250 in cash prizes and awards.

Online sign-ups for the contest are due by Monday, July 27. To enter, visit www. poncacityartassociation. com.

New this year is the Lemonade Walk that will be 10 am to 6 pm on all three days during Crazy Days. The Lemonade Walk encourages kids to come out and set up their own stands to sell lemonade, with all proceeds kept by the young entrepreneurs. Each stand will be assigned to a particular merchant and participants will design their own signs and submit them to the Ponca City Main Street for a prize presented by MakeKings for the best sign winner. Currently there are 20 participants this year.

“This will be a true entrepreneurship moment for them to create something and also be able to keep the proceeds that they make,” said Heppel. “I think people will think it is really cool; they can walk around and sample different lemonade stands.”

There will also be a $100 receipt giveaway this year. To enter, if you shop downtown during Crazy Days you have a chance to win $100 for any downtown store of your choice, with one receipt equaling one entry for the giveaway. Those that wish to enter will need to go into a store downtown, make a purchase, take a photo of their receipt and email it to admin@poncacitymain street.com. Participating stores will have a sign indicating their involvement with the giveaway.

“After the year [the merchants] had to go through and struggle, I really want them to be able to have a push in revenues,” said Heppel. “Its very, very important that we support our local businesses.”