Lancaster Avenue 21st Century will hold Lancaster Avenue Day festivities on Saturday, Oct. 7. The day will include a parade that starts on 35th Street at noon, as well as resource tables on topics ranging from registering to vote to paying your water bill.

The parade will proceed from 34th street until 43rd street, and the day will include a $100 “Best in Show” award. There will also be decorations on hand to “decorate your car, or your bike, or yourself, whatever you want,” said organizer Joel Spivak.

Spivak said the day grew out of Lancaster Avenue 21st Century, a business association he co-founded in 2005. Back then, he was concerned that gentrification in West Philadelphia might harm longtime residents and businesses. Spivak is experienced in this area: In the 1970s, he said, he was part of a wave of artists that gentrified South Street. As the Lancaster organization sought to promote local businesses while also encouraging new ones, Spivak came up with an idea. 

“One day I said, ‘Well, let’s have a parade up the street,” he recalled, “[to] bring together all the energy we have.”

That flash of inspiration became Lancaster Avenue Day and the parade that comes with it. The first was held in 2014, and it has been an annual event since then.

– Eduard Saakashvili