NW Philly This Week: August 27 – September 2

ByAlex Aberle

Your guide to Northwest Philadelphia for the week of Thursday, August 27 through Wednesday, September 2.

The Wall is back. After ten years away, the Philadelphia Cycling Classic returns on Sunday, and the entire race, thirty-two professional teams with seven of them at WorldTour level, comes down to one brutally steep block of Levering Street in Manayunk. If you have lived here any length of time you already know what that morning sounds like. If you moved here after 2016, you have never seen it, and you should.

The rest of the week arranges itself around that. Friday and Saturday, Cadence Cycling on Main Street is running a reception and a course-recon ride with actual pros. Sunday the whole neighborhood turns into a party with a bike race running through it. And on Monday, when everyone is wrecked, there is a ride literally named the Hangover Ride.

Away from the course: Thursday is the last Yoga in the Treetops of the year at Morris Arboretum, fifty feet up in the canopy. Friends of the Wissahickon has four things out in the park, including the Cresheim Crawl on Saturday morning, which goes past the ruins of Buttercup Cottage. And the libraries keep doing what the libraries do: storytime, job help, a paper craft club, fiber arts, and a Tuesday afternoon screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Lovett, which is a genuinely excellent use of a Tuesday.

One honest note about this week: the back half is thin. Cliveden closes Monday through Wednesday, both of Morris Arboretum’s summer series wrapped up last Wednesday, and Wyck’s late Wednesday garden hours ended with August. We are in the two-week gap between summer programming and fall programming. We are not going to invent things to fill it.

The big one: the Manayunk Wall, Sunday August 30

Sunday, August 30. Women’s race off at 8:30am, men’s at noon. Free. No tickets. You show up and stand somewhere.

The Philadelphia Cycling Classic runs a 14.4-mile circuit that starts on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, comes up Kelly Drive, turns onto Main Street, and then hits the Wall, which climbs Levering Street and continues up Lyceum Avenue, gaining about 240 feet in under half a mile at an average near ten percent with pitches of sixteen to seventeen. The women ride four laps, roughly 62 miles, finishing around 12:30pm. The men ride about eight laps to roughly 120 miles, finishing around 4:45pm. That means the Wall gets climbed, over and over, from mid-morning until late afternoon.

(A note on the numbers: the race’s own site publishes the distances but not the lap counts, and the lap math doesn’t quite reconcile with the advertised mileage. We are giving you “roughly” on purpose rather than a number we can’t stand behind.)

Where to stand. The officially recommended spots are the start/finish on the Parkway, Main Street in Manayunk, the Wall itself on Lyceum, and Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park. Around here it comes down to two choices: Main Street is the party (restaurants, bars, crowds, noise) and the base of the Wall is where you hear it before you see it. That wall of sound is half the reason anybody gets up the hill. Lemon Hill is where you go if you actually want to watch bike racing and have a picnic while you do it.

What this means if you live here

This is the part nobody puts on a poster, so here it is plainly.

  • Move your car by Friday morning. No-parking and tow zones take effect at 8:00am Friday, August 28 on Lyceum and Levering (Cresson to Pechin), Manayunk Ave (Ridge to Roxborough), Pechin St (Lyceum to Roxborough), and Roxborough Ave (Pechin to Manayunk). That is two days before the race and very easy to miss.
  • Everything else off the course by 3:00am Sunday, or it gets towed.
  • Roads close 3:00am to 10:00pm Sunday: Ridge Ave (Kelly Dr to Hermit), Main St (Ridge to Green Lane), Levering (Main to Tower), Cresson (Levering to Cotton), Lyceum (Tower to Mitchell), Pechin (Green Lane to Roxborough Ave), Roxborough Ave (Mitchell to Terrace), Manayunk Ave (Roxborough to Osborn), plus a long list of side streets and unit blocks. Kelly Drive closes entirely. Streets reopen in sections once the last rider is through.
  • East Falls: your impact is Kelly Drive, Ridge Ave and MLK Drive. The residential grid, Henry Ave, Midvale, Conrad, is not on the closure list. Also note MLK Drive closes from 8:00am Saturday for the amateur time trial.
  • SEPTA: buses on the 9, 27, 61 and 65 (among sixteen routes citywide) are detoured from 4:00am Sunday. The Manayunk/Norristown Regional Rail line is the recommended way in, about fifteen minutes from Center City, and it puts you at the race. Check septa.org/alerts for your specific route; SEPTA’s own detour detail wasn’t readable at the time of writing.
  • There is no event parking. Organizers are explicit about it. Walk, bike, or take the train.
  • Can’t get there? 6abc is carrying it, plus their app, YouTube, Hulu and Disney+.

Free musette bags for the first 2,000 people at the Fan Festival, which runs on the Parkway near Eakins Oval, Saturday 10am–5pm and Sunday 8am–5pm, with 150-plus vendors, a beer garden, bike demos and a kids’ mini-bike course.

Open all week

  • Cliveden house tours, 6401 Germantown Ave, 19144, tours start at The Barn, 98 E Cliveden St. Thursday through Sunday only, 12–4pm, last tour at 3pm; closed Monday through Wednesday and back open Sept 3. About an hour, covering the barn, the grounds and both floors, including this year’s exhibit “Procuring Liberty in the Emerging Nation.” Ticketed, and they don’t publish the price, so call 215-848-1777. Second-floor access means stairs; call ahead about accommodations. cliveden.org
  • Wyck, 6026 Germantown Ave, 19144. Grounds are free and open Tuesday–Friday 10am–4pm and Saturday 12–4pm. Walk-in house tours Thursday–Saturday 12–4pm, arrive by 3:30. (Their late Wednesday garden hours were a summer thing and ended August 26, so don’t turn up at 6pm expecting the gates open.) wyck.org
  • Woodmere, Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Ave, 19118. Open Wednesday–Sunday, 10am–5pm. The Woodmere Annual, their 83rd juried exhibition, comes down September 6, this is your second-to-last weekend for it. This year’s juror was Ron Tarver and the theme is Family. “Wild Sight: Thomas Chimes” runs through October 11. woodmeremuseum.org

Thursday, August 27

  • Baby and Toddler Storytime, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 19150, 10:30am. Stories, movement and songs with Mr. Nate, ages 0–3 with a grown-up. Large groups should call ahead. Free.
  • Ribbon cutting at The Blue Warbler, 8001 Germantown Ave, 19118, 10:30–11am. The Chestnut Hill Business District doing the official honors for the Hill’s new Mediterranean-Persian-Balkan all-day cafe and pub, which has actually been open since earlier this summer. Free, and a nice excuse to finally go in.
  • Thursday Volunteer Service Day, Friends of the Wissahickon, Wigard Avenue Trailhead, 726 Wigard Ave, 9am–12pm. Digging, raking, scraping, moving heavy things, alongside FOW staff. Gloves, tools and instruction provided; bring water, long pants and shoes you can ruin. No bathrooms on site. Free, registration required, they email confirmation the business day before. fow.org
  • Native Planters, The Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagy’s Mill Rd, 19128, 10am–12pm. Volunteer gardening in the courtyard and entrance gardens, all natives. Free; walk-ins welcome, though registering gets you the weather email.
  • Build It Club, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 3–4:30pm. LEGO, Magna-Tiles, Bionicles and wooden blocks. Preschool and up (small pieces). Free.
  • LEAP: Racing Cars, Wadsworth Library, 3:30pm. Build a car, race the car. Kids and teens, free.
  • First-Time Homebuyer Workshop, Mt. Airy CDC, 5:30–9:30pm. Credit, spending plans, the mortgage process, sales agreements, inspections, and the part people always miss: down payment and closing cost assistance. This one runs on Zoom, not in the office. Free, registration required. mtairycdc.org
  • Girl Dinner, Manayunk Brewing Company, 4120 Main St, 4–9pm. $25 for a Caesar, pasta or truffle fries, and a spritz. Wednesdays and Thursdays.
  • Yoga in the Treetops, Morris Arboretum, Out on a Limb canopy walk, 100 E Northwestern Ave, 5:15pm. Yoga fifty feet up in the tree canopy with Maura Manzo. This is the last one of 2026, the series ran five sessions from April. Get there early and walk the gardens first. $35 members / $40 non-members, registration required. morrisarboretum.org
  • Adult Art Club, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 19144, 7–9pm. Last Thursday of the month. Materials provided or bring your own thing; explicitly judgement-free, all skill levels. $10.
  • Bingo at The Rook, 4001 Cresson St, 19127, 7–9pm. Weekly.
  • The Danny Lynch Project, Manayunk Brewing, 4120 Main St, 8–11pm. Live acoustic, no cover.

Friday, August 28

Heads up: tow zones on the race course go live at 8:00am today. See the Sunday section: if you park on Lyceum, Levering, Pechin, Manayunk Ave or Roxborough Ave, today is the day to move.

  • Fun Friday: Wall Edition boot camp, GoalsFit, 110 Levering St, 19127, 5:45am. A boot camp themed around the hill, meeting at the gym. Yes, 5:45 in the morning. Yes, on the Wall.
  • Social Services at the Library, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 19128, 10am. A social worker on site to help you find and actually connect with community and government agencies. Free.
  • Infant and Toddler Playgroup, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 10:30am. Books, toys, music, and the early social and motor stuff that comes with it. Free.
  • Howe Sharp knife sharpening, Weavers Way Farm Market, 7095 Henry Ave, 19128 (at Saul High School), 11am–4pm. Drop your knives at the truck on the way in, collect them sharper on the way out. If you have been cutting tomatoes with a butter knife for two years, this is your morning.
  • PA CareerLink job search assistance, Lovett Memorial Library, 6945 Germantown Ave, 19119, 2pm. One-on-one help with résumés and career counseling. Free.
  • Let’s Make Art: Collage Your Family Story, Coleman Northwest Regional, 68 W Chelten Ave, 19144, 2pm. Drop-in, materials provided, bring photographs if you want. Free.
  • $5 Fridays, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 3–6pm. Select $5 drafts and $5 cocktails.
  • Cadence Cycling evening reception, 3740 Main St, 19127, 5–8pm. Drinks and light snacks at the shop with Factor Bikes and pro guests from the Modern Adventure team, two days before they race past the door. Free as listed.
  • Quidnunk and Friends, The Foodery on Ridge, 6148 Ridge Ave, 7–9pm. Free live music on Ridge Avenue, which is still a sentence we don’t get to write often enough.
  • Nini Camps and Erin Fox, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Ave, 19129, 8pm, doors 7:30. Nini Camps is the Americana songwriter who fronts Antigone Rising; Erin Fox is a Philly indie artist touring her album Uprooting. $20 online / $25 at the door, online sales close at 6pm. Free parking nearby and it’s a walk from East Falls station. Tickets
  • Friday Night Quizzo, Manayunk Brewing, 8:30–10:30pm. Drink and food specials, weekly prizes.

Saturday, August 29

  • Discover the Wissahickon: the Cresheim Crawl, Friends of the Wissahickon, meet at the Valley Green Inn, 8am–12pm. A long morning up the Cresheim Creek tributary and out of the main valley, past the northern trails’ outdoor classroom, the bike boardwalks, and the ruins of Buttercup Cottage. Rocky, rugged, often wet, boots and socks, not sneakers. Outdoor restrooms at the Inn; the 27 bus gets you there. Free, registration required. fow.org
  • Chestnut Hill Farmers Market, Germantown Ave at Mermaid Lane, in front of the Mermaid Inn, 9am–12pm. Year-round, rain or shine.
  • Volunteer-Led Service Day, East Side, Friends of the Wissahickon, Valley Green Road upper parking lot, 9am–12pm. Trail work, invasive removal, litter pickup, depending on the day. Plenty of parking here, which is not true of most FOW meeting points. Free, registration required.
  • Ride and Recon with the pros, Cadence Cycling, 3740 Main St, 9–11am. Coffee, pastries and Factor demo bikes at 9, then at 10:30 you ride the course with Factor-sponsored pros, through Fairmount Park and Center City and back to take on the Wall. RSVP through their Strava event.
  • Pretzel Park Farmers Market, 4300 Silverwood St, Manayunk, 10am–2pm, with Music at the Market from The Kelpies, 11am–1pm. Rain or shine.
  • Sit and Stitch, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 3501 Midvale Ave, 19129, 10:30am. Bring whatever’s on your needles. Drop-in, free.
  • Preschool Storytime, Coleman Northwest Regional, 68 W Chelten Ave, 11am. Ages 2–5 with a caregiver, siblings welcome. Free.
  • Cut and Paste: Paper Craft Club, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 1pm. Free.
  • Community Cafe Live, Saint Harmony Cafe, Germantown, 1–6pm. A “sip, gather, grow” afternoon with live performances, food trucks, florals and a community tea talk at 3pm. Pay-what-you-wish fundraiser, tea-party attire encouraged. (They haven’t published a street address anywhere we can find, so check @stharmonycafe before you head over.)
  • SAT Prep Workshop: final session, Chestnut Hill Library, 2pm. The closing session of a free eight-week summer series with Tarrina Tutors: answering strategies, traps to watch for, and how to be ready on the day. Teens, free.
  • Manayunk’s Big Comedy Show, Love City Manayunk, 4323 Main St, 8pm. Standup headlined by TaTa Sherise. Ticketed through Eventbrite.
  • “She Wrote That”, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Ave, 8pm, doors 7:30. $20 online / $25 at the door.
  • Mia Johnson, Manayunk Brewing, 4120 Main St, 8–11pm. Live acoustic, no cover.

Race-adjacent, downtown: the amateur time trial runs on MLK Drive from 9am (eight miles, out to the Falls Bridge and back), and the Fan Festival on the Parkway opens 10am–5pm.

Sunday, August 30: race day

See the top of this post for road closures, parking and transit. Here’s what’s actually happening on the ground.

  • Charity Ride for the AACR, 6:30am, one full 14.4-mile lap of the course, starting from the Parkway. Before the pros are anywhere near it.
  • Love City Brewing opens at 8:30am, 4323 Main St, food and drink specials all day, with Sophie’s BBQ inside doing brisket and pork breakfast sandwiches with egg and cheese from the same hour. This is the answer to “where do we go at eight in the morning.”
  • Women’s race, 8:30am. Four laps, roughly 62 miles, finishing around 12:30pm.
  • Manayunk Family Watch Party, the parking lot at Main and Levering, 25 Levering St, 10am–4pm. Free. Right at the bottom of the Wall: design-your-own ride shades, helmet bedazzling with Trek, a tie-dye party with North Light Community Center, a towpath scavenger hunt and canal bingo. Well-behaved dogs welcome. This is the one to bring kids to.
  • Cadence Cycling race day watch party, 3740 Main St, 10am–5pm. Cold drinks, snacks and swag from Giant, BMC and Factor.
  • Men’s race, noon. Roughly eight laps, about 120 miles, finishing around 4:45pm.
  • Merchants on Main Street doing things: City of Paws (4167 Main) putting out cooling pools for dogs, Thrillerdelphia (4203 Main) with free crafts and drinks, The Emporium by Lady Holiday (4235 Main) doing $50 permanent jewelry with a free sport charm, The Little Apple (4361 Main) with custom race pint glasses, Orbit Gallery showing cycling prints including Charles Cushing’s The Wall, and AFC Fitness running a table in the Levering lot.
  • Devil’s Dollar: Liz Miller album release, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Ave, 2:30pm, doors 2. $25 online / $30 at the door, online sales close at noon.
  • Music and Musicians, The Foodery on Ridge, 6148 Ridge Ave, 3–5pm. Weekly open jam, free.
  • The Brewery Alley BikeHaha, Brewery Alley, Baker St between Carson and Conarroe, 4–9pm. Free. The race-day edition of the Brouhaha block party the Brewery Alley residents throw themselves: Waycool Junior and Anne Fahn, EDO, Thomas Parker Williams, Modern Monk, BADNA, Perpetual Pump. This is where the neighborhood goes after the barricades come down.
  • Free produce stand, Hansberry Garden and Nature Center, 5150 Wayne Ave, 19144. Several Germantown gardens going in together on a free produce stand, with help from Germantown United CDC. (No time published, worth a look at hansberrygarden.org first.)
  • Grape Room open mic, 105 Grape St, 6–10pm. In-person sign-ups from 6. Free.

Monday, August 31

  • Monday Meditation Meet-up, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 3501 Midvale Ave, 12pm. Free.
  • Attaquer Swarm Hangover Ride, Cadence Cycling, 3740 Main St, 5:30pm. The day-after ride, named with full honesty. RSVP on the Strava event and you’re in the raffle.
  • Open mic, Wissahickon Brewing Company, 3705 W School House Ln, 19129, 6:30–10pm. Weekly, hosted by Mark Menk. (Listed on the neighborhood venue calendar rather than the brewery’s own site, so worth a call if you’re driving in to play.)
  • Trivia with Brewtanant Dan, Twisted Gingers, 4317 Fleming St, 19128, 6:30–9pm.
  • Quizzo at The Rook, 4001 Cresson St, 7–10pm. Weekly.

One closure note: the Morris Arboretum Fernery is shut for maintenance today through Friday September 4. The rest of the garden is open as normal.

Tuesday, September 1

  • Devil’s Pool Clean-Up, Friends of the Wissahickon, meet at the Valley Green Inn, 9:30am–12:30pm. A mile and a half over rocky ground to Devil’s Pool, then you carry out what other people left (bags cap at 20 lbs). Restrooms at the Inn before you set off; gloves and tools provided. Free, registration required. fow.org
  • Sprouts, autumn session begins, The Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagy’s Mill Rd, 9:30–11am. Sensory nature class for children 18 months to 3 years with a grown-up: walks, art, music, storytelling, run on the same method as their Nature Preschool. $20 members / $25 non-members, pre-registration required and capacity is limited.
  • Work Successphilly, Coleman Northwest Regional Library, 68 W Chelten Ave, 1–3pm. One-on-one time with an actual HR professional, through Neighborhood Community Action Center 8. Monthly, and free. If you are job hunting in Germantown this is the most concretely useful hour on this whole list.
  • Fiber Arts, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 2–4pm. Crafting and conversation, all skill levels. Drop-in, free.
  • Lovett Film Club: Epic Myths and Quests, Lovett Memorial Library, 6945 Germantown Ave, 4–6pm. This week it’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as part of a series on how the oldest stories keep getting remade. Adults and teens, free.
  • Taco Tuesday, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 4–10pm. A rotating taco truck in the taproom, $6 La Libertad lagers, $6 margaritas, $6 tequila shots.
  • Tuesday Night Music at the Manayunk Bridge Garden, 100 Dupont St, 5:30–8:30pm.

Also today: registration opens for Morris Arboretum’s 19th annual Scarecrow Design Contest. This year’s theme is “From 1776 to the Future: Celebrating the 70s,” and you have until September 25 to enter. Start thinking now.

Wednesday, September 2

  • Quizzo with John, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 7–9pm. (Note this is Quizzo, not the Germantown Jazz Jam. The jam skips this week and comes back September 30. Attic’s weeklies genuinely do skip, so always check.)
  • Open mic at the Dawson, Dawson Street Pub, 100 Dawson St, 19127, sign-ups at 7, music from 8.
  • The Grape Open Jam, The Grape Room, 105 Grape St, 8–10:30pm. Bring an instrument, or don’t; drummers bring sticks. Free.

Running something we missed? Send it to hello@nwphilly.com and we’ll get it in next week’s list. We’d rather hear about your block party than miss it.

One housekeeping note: we check every listing against the venue’s own page before it goes in here, but places change plans, weather happens, and small venues don’t always update. Confirm before you drive over, and this week, more than most, check the road closures before you drive anywhere.

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