Inman Park loves to decorate for Halloween. People get pretty creative with their displays, and they especially love skeletons. Here are some views from around the neighborhood. For me, it’s particularly fun to see decorations on the historic houses. Enjoy!

The annual Scarecrows in the Garden tradition takes place in October with scarecrows displayed around the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

The scarecrows are all handcrafted by local schools, families, artists, businesses, and nonprofits, and there were over 100 imaginative creations on display. Some were based on famous people, others made reference to famous works of art, and others were just whimsical.

There were several scarecrows of famous musicians:

The movie industry was represented:

There were nods to famous artists and artwork:

In addition, the garden was decked out for autumn with over 11,000  pumpkins, squashes, and gourds. At the end of the month, the garden will donate as much as possible. Some will go to food banks and restaurants. Some will go to the zoo. (Apparently, the rhino loves pumpkin.) Anything that isn’t donated will be composted on site and used to fertilize the plants around the garden.

There was even a famous architect. Mies Van der Rohe was a German and American architect, and he was a pioneer of modern architecture in the 20th century.

And then there were lots of whimsical scarecrows.

In addition, the garden was decked out for autumn with over 11,000  pumpkins, squashes, and gourds. At the end of the month, the garden will donate as much as possible. Some will go to food banks and restaurants. Some will go to the zoo. (Apparently, the rhino loves pumpkin.) Anything that isn’t donated will be composted on site and used to fertilize the plants around the garden.

The L5P Halloween Festival & Parade takes place every October in the historic commercial district of Little 5 Points. But first, a little history…

The arrival of the trolley car in the late 1800s in Atlanta created booming city neighborhoods further from downtown such as Inman Park and Candler Park. As a result, Little 5 Points became one of the first commercial districts outside of downtown Atlanta and attracted businesses such as movie theaters, grocery and drug stores, barbershops, and restaurants. 

Despite early success, the Great Depression hit L5P hard, and the community soon suffered from severe urban decay. With a proposed highway coming through, the local citizens (including those in Inman Park) decided they’d had enough. In the early 1970s, they formed coalitions, acquired funding, organized demonstrations, and united for a common cause: to take the neighborhood back. Soon the City of Atlanta began to award L5P community grants and funds for public improvements, and by the 1990s, L5P was booming. The entrepreneurial spirit of community-based businesses helped spur the revitalization of L5P which today is an avant-garde arts and shopping district home to a wide variety of shops, restaurants, bars, services, live music venues and performing arts theaters.

This weekend was the 18th annual Little 5 Points Halloween Festival & Parade. This is the biggest Halloween celebration in the Southeast with tens of thousands of people coming to the L5P commercial district to party and get their spook on.

The two-day festival included an artists market with lots of and lots of booths lining the street, live music, local food trucks, and street buskers. There were also some fun events such as a pet costume contest, pumpkin smashing, and a children’s area where kids could create their own Halloween monster stickers.

Of course, my favorite part of the festival was the parade! It lasted for well over an hour and included elaborate floats, marching bands, local businesses, dance crews, political groups, and others, and there were Halloween costumes aplenty. All in all, it was a fun way to spend the afternoon on a beautiful fall day.

This past weekend saw the annual Pride Festival in Atlanta. Activities were canceled on Saturday as Hurricane Isaias blew in from the Gulf Coast. The rain stopped around 10:30 on Saturday morning, and it turned into a cloudy but nice day. However, here in Atlanta, we’ve learned to be better safe than sorry when it comes to weather. The city learned a hard lesson several years ago when a snow and ice storm came through which shut down the city for 3 days and stranded thousands of people on the roads. Luckily, the events on Sunday were still a go, so I headed over to watch the parade and check out the festival.

Atlanta’s first Pride parade took place in 1970 with 100 demonstrators carrying “Equal Rights for Gays” posters. By 1976, the parade had swelled to over 1,000 marchers, and Mayor Maynard Jackson declared June 26th to be Gay Pride Day in Atlanta. After facing backlash, Mayor Jackson proclaimed another Civil Liberties Day in Atlanta in 1977, and parade attendance skyrocketed. In 1981, Atlanta started celebrating Pride Week which included a live concert, radio show, art show, film festival, history symposium, block party, and voter registration drive. 

In 2009, Pride was moved from June to October to avoid the heat of summer in the South and to coincide with National Coming Out Day, which is why I found myself attending the event in October 2026 with approximately 350,000 other people.

The festival is held in Piedmont Park and includes an artists market, corporate sponsor booths, drink vendors, food trucks, a community history exhibit, a kids zone, a wellness zone, and music stages. I learned that Georgia-natives The B-52s performed at the festival in 2000, and local Atlanta duo The Indigo Girls performed in 2005 to a crowd of 320,000 people. Wow! I didn’t recognize any of the performers this year. I also didn’t realize that the AIDS Quilt was on display in the park. I totally missed that. Phooey.

The parade was definitely the highlight. Today, the Atlanta Pride parade is the largest parade in the city. Over 300 groups participate with a total of 5,000 marchers. In addition, an estimated 100,000 spectators watch the parade. The parade route travels through 21 blocks of Midtown, and it lasts for 4 hours.

Since 2000, corporate involvement in the festival has grown. Not only does the festival have big corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines whose financial donations help pay for the operations of the festival, it seemed like 80% of the groups marching in the parade were corporate. I saw Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Ralph Lauren, Kohl’s, Delta Credit Union, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Hyatt, Atlanta United, Inspire Brands, and so many more.

I also saw many non-profits and small local businesses such as several local churches, Atlanta Botanical Garden, a Jewish community group, local colleges and universities, Planned Parenthood, Lambda Legal, and local gay and lesbian bars.

The parade was wonderful. There were lots of wacky costumes, the ubiquitous rainbow flags and balloons, and lots of disco and dance music. All in all, there was a real sense of coming together, community, acceptance, and celebration. It was really a fun and inspiring event.