The historic Oakland Cemetery was founded in 1850 and covers 48 acres just east of downtown Atlanta. Over 70,000 people are buried here including Atlanta mayors, Georgia governors, Union and Confederate soldiers, paupers in unmarked graves, and others. Some recognizable names include author Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and musician Kenny Rogers.

The Illumine festival happens in the cemetery every April. We walked over from our house and arrived at dusk.

As the sun goes down, colorful lighting illuminates grave markers, mausoleums, and other structures around the property. Trees and other vegetation are also highlighted with a variety of colors. We’d been to the cemetery previously during the day, so it was cool to see it after dark.

In addition to the cemetery-wide mood lighting, there were also lighted art installations by several Atlanta-area artists. This year, 11 artists were featured, and some of the artists were on hand to talk about their work. Art media ranged from neon to holograms to LED to projection and more.

There were also musicians staged around the property. There was one guy in particular who really caught our attention. He was a cellist who used a loop machine to record layer upon layer upon layer of rhythms and melodies to make it sound like there were several instruments playing together. He would even include tapping and knocking on the wooden body of the cello to create percussion tracks. It was really cool. We stuck around so we could listen to his whole performance, and then we chatted with him afterwards and bought a CD. You can find his videos online by searching for OkCello on YouTube.

Of course, there were snacks booths set up around the cemetery plus a merchandise booth selling items from the cemetery museum shop. There were also port-o-potties available.

All in all, it was a really fun evening.

For this year’s Inman Park Festival, I had planned out our whole weekend to tour some homes, listen to great music, and eat lots of festival food. Instead, this happened.

I didn’t get to see much of the festival at all due to a broken arm. However, I did draft a blog post beforehand and I have lots of photos from previous years, so I wanted to be sure to capture the event.

The Arts and Crafts Market and The Street Market

There are something like 400 vendors who participate in the festival. Several streets become pedestrian-only, and a crowd of people come into the neighborhood. Sometimes the streets feel like they’re crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with people.

Food and Drink

The Inman Park Festival has a plethora of food vendors that offer festival staples such as hand pies, barbecue, gyros, sausages, sandwiches, and other street food. I always get excited about the fact that there is a corndog stand a block away from my house for two whole days, and I did manage to get a jalapeno corndog. Last year I discovered a food truck that does great crepes, so I made a point of going there again, but they were sold out. There are also plenty of beer trucks and wine and cocktail vendors if you’re thirsty. I mostly stuck around the house and tried to rest. There’s always next year!

Music

There are three music stages set up around the neighborhood, and groups perform from noon until 7 or 8 pm each day. There is always a wide variety of music including, rock, jazz, blues, Cajun, folk, indie, soul, R&B, Latin, bluegrass, funk, Americana, and so much more. This year, there were 29 musical groups, and we managed to see none of them.

Dance Festival

This year was the 25th anniversary of the Inman Park Dance Festival with a free performance on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the Trolley Barn. Six dance organizations participated, and performances included classical ballet blended with African dance forms, Honors Program students from Emory University’s Dance & Movement Studies Program, a solo performance, a modern dance company with artists with and without apparent and non-apparent disabilities, an athletic dance company, and an Inman Park dance school for ages 3 through adult.

Little Gnome Zone

During Festival each year, the Little Gnome Zone is set up in Springvale Park. This kids’ zone is especially designed to help get the wiggles out of the youngest Inman Park Festival goers. In addition to the permanent playground in the park, there’s a bounce house, arts and crafts activities, face painting, circus and aerial acts, and a variety of drinks and snacks for sale. This year, there was also a K-pop dance party with a DJ on Saturday afternoon.

Tour of Homes

Inman Park was founded in 1889 as Atlanta’s first planned suburb, an elegant neighborhood with its own privately operated street car system. Over time, however, the area fell into decline, and by the early 1970s it had become a neglected, redlined neighborhood facing serious challenges. Recognizing the enduring charm and potential of its historic houses, a small group of determined buyers stepped in. They worked to convince lenders and insurance providers that Inman Park was once again a worthy place for investment. In 1972, these trailblazing residents opened their recently acquired homes to the public to highlight their restoration work, giving rise to what is now the Inman Park Tour of Homes.

The Parade

The annual parade takes place on Saturday afternoon. Billed as the quirkiest and most colorful parade in Atlanta, it includes marching bands, floats, art cars, drill teams, mascots, clowns, jugglers, politicians, and much, much more. We did manage to see the parade this year as we returned home from urgent care just 15 minutes before the parade started.

The parade starts in front of our house which adds to the excitement every year. A couple of hours before the start time, parade participants begin showing up on our corner. We can hear bagpipes and marching bands practicing, we see people in colorful costumes milling around, and local and state politicians arrive with their chauffeurs and convertibles. One of my favorite parts of the weekend is watching the head parade marshal (not to be confused with the Grand Marshal) with her bullhorn as she organizes the groups and shouts at them each in turn to start marching down the parade route.

The parade is always led by a Grand Marshal who is chauffeured in a fancy car.

There are always politicians and political messages from various groups.

Some of the parade groups were what you’d expect from a traditional parade.

Other participants are more on the fun-loving, silly side.

The Gnome Tradition

When we first moved here, there was a group of people marching in the parade dressed as garden gnomes. They were trying to break a Guiness record for the largest gathering of people dressed as gnomes. There was already an established record in England with 478 people. The Atlanta group marched in the parade for several years before finally breaking the record with 755 people in 2018. Since then, gnomes continue to participate in Inman Park Festival albeit in much smaller numbers. And you can find tiny gnome hats in the neighborhood throughout the year.

While the main festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, there are activities on Friday as well. The Tour of Homes starts on Friday afternoon and runs through the weekend. This year I did a volunteer shift for one of the homes and checked people’s tickets. It was so much fun. I met a lot of people (the tour was really busy  on Friday), and I got to see familiar faces from the neighborhood. You buy your ticket ahead of time, and then each house is a self-guided tour. Can you imagine being a home-owner and having hundreds of people traipsing through your house over three days? No, thank you. There were no photos allowed in the house where I volunteered which is the owner’s prerogative, but here’s the facade.

One of the houses was very interesting due to the fact that it was in the middle of a renovation. And the owners were living through it all with their infant son and very large dog. They thought they were just going to scrape and repaint the walls, but they uncovered structural damage and failing plaster in the process. I’m guessing this is what it was like for neighborhood “pioneers” in the 1970s who were buying decrepit old houses and fixing them up while living in them.

Another interesting house was built by neighborhood friends in 2002. The husband is an architect and a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. You can see Wright’s influence in the design. It’s funny, Chad and I had been there for dinner and Chad had attended many festival committee planning meetings in the house, but we had never gotten a full tour.

The other event on Friday evening is the Butterfly Ball. The event is an annual fundraiser for neighborhood theater groups. We did go this year but we’ve gone previously, and it’s a fun evening with dinner, a band, and dancing. I took some photos while the catering crew and music stage guys were setting up earlier in the afternoon. As you can see in the photos, this year’s theme was Alice in Wonderland.