This Sunday is the seventh annual Porchfest! If you have never been, Porchfest is an Ithaca music festival held on the porches of houses in downtown Fall Creek and Northside neighborhoods. This year music-goers can wander the neighborhood streets and hear over 100 bands playing on various porches. Maps are created to show what bands are playing, where, and when. According to the Porchfest website, music this year will range from classical to roots, rock to country to pop to reggae to punk rock, and from Appalachian to Brazilian to Irish to Swedish to Zimbabwean, and more.
The thing I like about this festival is the community involvement and local flair. Fall Creek and Northside homeowners volunteer their porches – either to bands they know, bands they like, or even bands they know nothing about. Many of the bands are local, and it is fun when you stumble upon a porch with your normally staid co-worker playing drums for a rock band.
The event is refreshingly simple and the only street vendors to be seen at this festival are two tasty food trucks at Thompson Park and the occasional lemonade stands manned by entrepreneurial grade-schoolers. Porchfest 2013 is sponsored by Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services, a non-profit, community development corporation whose mission is to revitalize Ithaca’s neighborhoods, encourage stability and diversity, and to help people of modest incomes obtain affordable housing on a long-term basis. The event is free, though donations toward the cost of printing the maps is appreciated.
Porchfest 2013 takes place this Sunday, Sept. 15th from 1:00pm – 5:00pm with an open jam session to follow at 5:30pm in Thompson Park.