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.
