NW Philly This Week: October 15–21

ByAlex Aberle

Your week in Northwest Philadelphia, Thursday October 15 through Wednesday October 21.

Saturday is going to make you choose, and this week there are three ways to be wrong about it. Manayunk Fall Fest takes Main Street from 11 until 4, free, with two stages, 29 vendors, eleven food trucks and a kids market run by actual kids. Two miles east, East FallsFest runs 11 to 5 at Ridge and Midvale with a Wissahickon Brewing beer garden, free pumpkin decorating and music all day. And Germantown, quietly, has assembled a full day of its own: a falconer with a live screech owl at 10, free yoga at Grumblethorpe at 11, a community archiving fair where you can get your family photos and VHS tapes scanned, a benefit for Crossroads Women’s Center, and a gallery turning five. Pick a neighborhood. Commit to it.

The rest of the week is unusually good on the edges. Thursday night the Chestnut Hill Conservancy runs the first ever 10×10 History Jam at the Venetian Club, free, where ten people get ten auto-advancing images and five minutes each to tell one story about this place, with a DJ between them. Sunday is the real sleeper: Harvest Fest at The Farm at Awbury, free, 11 to 4, with hayrides, horse rides, apples, pumpkins, local brews and goats, and it is also the last day you can vote in the Scarecrow Walk at Morris. And on Tuesday afternoon Friends of the Wissahickon is leading a seventeen-mile bike ride that starts in a movie theater parking lot, which is the most Manayunk sentence we have written all month.

If you own an old house up here, two things this week are aimed squarely at you: a free hour at Roxborough Library on Saturday morning on the red flags to look for when house hunting, and a free Conservancy panel on Wednesday night on using connected technology to protect a historic home without wrecking it. Neither one is selling you anything.

A word on the libraries, because they shape the week and this one is lopsided. Everything is shut Sunday, as always. Tuesday is where the programming piles up, with four separate things at Roxborough alone. Falls of Schuylkill is still closed for its HVAC upgrade until January, so East Falls regulars, you are still up at Roxborough for now. And Wadsworth is quietly carrying Germantown and Cedarbrook this week with a dozen listings, including a free soap-making workshop and an author giving away free copies of her book.

Saturday’s big one: Manayunk Fall Fest

Manayunk Fall Fest, Main Street, Manayunk, 19127, Saturday October 17, 11am to 4pm, free.

Two stages, 29 vendors, eleven food trucks, and a Kids Market on the Venice Island basketball courts where the vendors are 40 kids aged 5 to 17. Activities spread across Cotton Street, Grape Street, Gay Street, Canal View Park, RichardsApex and Venice Island. Free to walk in, no ticket, no gate.

The music, so you can time your arrival. Cotton Street Stage: Street Beans at 11, Kat Rivers and the Second Sight at 12:15, a Rowdy Cowboys line dancing demo at 1:30, Chris Rafter at 3. Grape Street Stage: Huston West at noon, Slim Chance at 2:30.

Getting there, and the one thing everybody assumes wrong

Main Street stays open to traffic. This is a “Main Street open” event, and the closures are Cotton Street, Grape Street and Roxborough Avenue only. Almost everyone assumes a Main Street festival means Main Street is closed. It is not, so do not plan your walking route as though the roadway is yours.

Parking: the district counts over 700 spaces across its lots, and three are specifically unaffected by the closures. The Main and Levering lot (which has the accessible parking), the 4000 Main Street lot (nights and weekends only, which includes Saturday), and the Green Lane lot, on Green Lane between Main and Cresson. Venice Island is reached from Main at Lock or Main at Cotton.

No tow zone or temporary no-parking notice has been published, so we are not going to tell you there is one. If you are parking on a residential side street, you are taking the usual chances.

Transit is the better play. Regional Rail on the Manayunk/Norristown line puts you at Manayunk station, one block off Main. Bus 35 is the Manayunk/Roxborough loop and the 61 runs from 9th and Market, both via the Wissahickon Transportation Center. Driving in, it is I-76 exit 338 at Belmont and Green Lane, or 340A at Lincoln and Kelly.

No rain date has been published. And one note so nobody panics: there is an Eventbrite RSVP page for Fall Fest that reads “sold out.” It is a capped free RSVP, not a gate. Nobody is turned away from an open street festival.

One more Saturday Manayunk note: the Fall Mac N’ Cheese Crawl, noon to 4pm, 18 Main Street restaurants, $20 presale, is sold out. Second annual, and if you want in next year, buy early.

And at the same time, two miles away

East FallsFest, Ridge Avenue and Midvale Avenue, East Falls, 19129, Saturday October 17, 11am to 5pm, free.

The smaller, more neighborly one. Local shops, crafters and artisans doing jewelry, clothing, fragrances, glassware and candles. East Falls fitness businesses demoing. Tacos from Cresta, sweets from LeBus, cookies from Famous Fourth Street. A beer garden run by Wissahickon Brewing. Free pumpkin decorating for kids. Music all day courtesy of The Fallser Club, though the lineup was still listed as TBA when we checked, so we are not going to promise you names.

Here is the useful part, and it is a warning rather than a feature: East FallsFest has published no road closures, no tow zones, no parking guidance beyond an embedded map, no transit information and no rain date. A festival at Ridge and Midvale with no published closure plan is worth knowing about in advance if you live on those blocks. If you are driving, give yourself room and expect the unexpected. (There is also a “Click to register” Google form on their page with no explanation of what it registers you for. It is almost certainly vendors or volunteers, not attendees. You do not need to RSVP to show up.)

And the third option: a full Saturday in Germantown

Nobody is billing this as a festival and it is not organised as one, but six separate things are happening on and around Germantown Avenue on Saturday, most of them free, and together they add up to a better day than either street fair if crowds are not your thing. A falconer at 10, yoga in a historic garden at 11, an archiving fair and a benefit concert from 1, a gallery anniversary from 3, and a film screening in a green space at 5. Details in Saturday’s list below. It is all within about a mile.

Thursday, October 15

  • Morning Wellness Walks, The Farm at Awbury, 6336 Ardleigh Street, 7 to 8am. An hour at a moderate pace through gardens, woodlands, farm, ponds and meadows with wellness coordinator Megan Do Nascimento. No meeting point is given beyond the venue, so email wellness@awbury.org if you are driving over for a 7am start.
  • Thursday Volunteer Service Day, Friends of the Wissahickon, Kitchen’s Lane Bridge on Forbidden Drive, 9am to 12pm. Site prep for Saturday’s planting, which means cutting, scraping and digging with long-handled tools. No experience needed, FOW brings the gloves and the instruction. Free, registration required. The Kitchens Lane lot is small, there is more street parking near the Jannette Street Trailhead, and both are a short hike in, so come early. There is a composting bathroom at Kitchen’s Lane, which almost nobody tells you.
  • Sprouts, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagys Mill Road, 9:30 to 11am. Sensory nature class for 18 months to 3 years with a grown-up, built on the Nature Preschool’s emergent-learning approach. $20 members, $25 non-members, pre-registration required and space is limited.
  • Native Planters, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Road, 10am to 12pm. The easiest yes on this whole list. Show up, pull weeds, tend natives, tools provided, no commitment. Free, registration recommended but walk-ins welcome. It runs every Thursday through October 29, so you can make it a habit this week.
  • Fall Salt Snapshot Day, meet outside the Cedars House off Forbidden Drive at Northwestern Avenue, 200 W Northwestern Avenue, 10am to 12pm. The Wissahickon Environmental Center and Friends of the Wissahickon sampling the creek for road-salt levels. Volunteers then disperse to collection points inside the park, so a car or a bike genuinely helps, this is not a stand-in-one-place morning. RSVP through Eventbrite, questions to wec@phila.gov.
  • Movement and Machines with the RAD Lab, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Avenue, 10:30am. Not a passive storytime. Kids learn movement symbols, do a warm-up, hear a book read aloud and then build moveable paper robots and cyborgs. A dance-and-engineering hybrid, and it is free.
  • Baby and Toddler Storytime, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 10:30am. Ages 0 to 3 with a participating caregiver. Free.
  • LEAP: Crafternoon, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 3:30pm. After-school drop-in craft for kids and teens. Free, and it runs again Wednesday.
  • Girl Dinner, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 4 to 9pm, $25. Runs Wednesdays and Thursdays every week.
  • Germantown Historical Society film screenings and crafts, 5501 Germantown Avenue, 5 to 7pm. Films and hands-on craft activities out in the Historical Society’s green space, running tonight, Friday and Saturday. A genuinely pleasant way to spend an early evening on the Avenue.
  • 10×10 History Jam, The Venetian Club, 8030 Germantown Avenue, 6 to 8pm. Free. The Chestnut Hill Conservancy’s first crack at this format and it is a good one: ten speakers, ten automatically advancing images each, five minutes apiece, with a local DJ playing short sets in between. Stories about the people, architecture and history of Chestnut Hill and Northwest Philadelphia. Registration through the Conservancy. If you only do one free thing this week, this is our pick.
  • Bingo at The Rook, 4001 Cresson Street, 7 to 9pm. Weekly, and about as low-stakes a Thursday as exists.
  • Buzzed Bees: A Tipsy Spelling Competition, The Grape, 105 Grape Street, 7:30 to 10pm. A spelling bee for adults who have been drinking. We have nothing to add.
  • Sid Miller Dance Band, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 8 to 11pm, no cover.

Friday, October 16

  • Home Farm Club, Wyck, 6026 Germantown Avenue, 10am to 12pm. A working session in the kitchen garden and you leave with a share of the produce. Free, no registration, enter through the Walnut Lane gate.
  • An Inner Vision: Vision Thru Art Student Exhibition, artists’ reception, Allens Lane Art Center, 601 W Allens Lane, 1 to 3pm. A student show reception in the middle of a Friday afternoon, which is an unusual and rather lovely slot. Allens Lane does not print a price, so assume free and expect to be welcomed.
  • Social Services at the Library with a Social Worker, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 2pm. Drop-in help with benefits and housing from an actual social worker. Free, no appointment. Genuinely useful, and not a program.
  • Crochet Club, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 3:30pm. Free.
  • LEAP Game Day, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 3:30pm. Free.
  • DIY Bag Charms for Teens, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Lane, 3:30 to 4:30pm. Beaded, rope and letter charms. It is a three-week arc, October 16, 23 and 30, and the last session is a charm swap party, so this is the one to start at. Free.
  • $5 Fridays, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley Street, 3 to 6pm. Weekly.
  • Germantown Historical Society film screenings and crafts, 5501 Germantown Avenue, 5 to 7pm. Second of three evenings.
  • FallFest, Historic RittenhouseTown, 208 Lincoln Drive, 5 to 8pm, pay what you can. Pumpkin picking at the patch from 5 to 7, pumpkin painting, s’mores, games, and three costume contests, kids, adults and pets, with winners announced at 7. Best family pick of the week and the price is right. No rain plan or parking guidance is published, which matters for a 5pm start down in the Lincoln Drive gorge, so leave light.
  • Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, Jazz at Woodmere, Woodmere Art Museum, Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Avenue, 6pm. $18 members, $28 non-members, and it is sold out. So is every other date in the fall series, all the way to December 18. That is the actual news here: the hottest ticket on the Avenue is a $28 jazz night in a museum hall. If you want the December ones, buy now.
  • Philly Music Fest presents Owen Stewart, Nik Greeley, Sug Daniels, Roberta Faceplant and The Flying Vees, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Avenue, 7 to 11pm, ticketed through Humanitix. Five acts on one bill, which is the Fallser Club acting as a real music room rather than a rental hall.
  • Quidnunk and Friends, free live music, The Foodery on Ridge, 6148 Ridge Avenue, 7 to 9pm. Free, weekly.
  • Friday Night Quizzo with Quizzadores, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 8:30 to 10:30pm. Weekly. (The brewery lists Quizzo and Quizzadores as two entries at the same time on the same night, which we read as one event and its host.)

Saturday, October 17

Three festivals’ worth of day, and the three above are only the start of it. Here is how to think about the rest. Early morning belongs to the Wissahickon and Roxborough: the FOW planting and the Schuylkill Center tree planting both start between 9 and 10, so if you want to do real outdoor work you can be done by one and still catch a festival. Mid-morning splits by neighborhood: Pretzel Park’s market opens at 10 in Manayunk, Roxborough Library has a home-inspection talk at 10:30 that is quietly one of the most useful hours on this list, and Germantown’s day starts with a falconer at 10. Afternoon is the crowded part: Chestnut Hill has a 1927 Harold Lloyd comedy at 1, a Metropolitan Museum curator at 2 and a Conservancy walking tour at 2, while Germantown has an archiving fair and a benefit concert from 1 and a gallery anniversary from 3. And late afternoon is the trail: FOW’s Toleration hike goes out at 3 and finishes near golden hour.

  • Saturday Planting at Kitchen’s Lane Bridge, Friends of the Wissahickon, Kitchen’s Lane Bridge on Forbidden Drive, 9am to 12pm. The payoff for Thursday’s prep, this is the actual planting. Free, tools provided, registration required. Same parking situation as Thursday, small lot, overflow near the Jannette Street Trailhead, short hike in, composting bathroom on site. Cancelled in steady precipitation.
  • The Chestnut Hill Farmers Market, Germantown Avenue at Mermaid Lane in front of The Mermaid Inn, 9am to 12pm. Year-round, weekly.
  • Volunteer Tree Planting at Port Royal Gully, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagys Mill Road, 10am to 1pm. Free, registration required and everyone signs up individually even within a group. Lunch and snacks are included, and it runs rain or shine, which makes it the most weather-reliable thing on this week’s list. Long pants, sturdy boots, a water bottle. Gloves, tools and training provided. 18 and up to volunteer on your own, younger with a parent. One gap: they do not publish where the Port Royal Gully site is or where to park, so call 215-482-7300 before you go.
  • Pretzel Park Farmers Market, Pretzel Park, 4300 Silverwood Street, 10am to 2pm. Volunteer-run, rain or shine, free to browse. This week’s music and food lineup was not posted, which means unannounced, not cancelled. It opens an hour before Fall Fest and sits a few blocks off Main, so it is an easy first stop.
  • Raptor Jawns: a birds of prey close encounter, Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, Germantown, 10 to 11:30am. Free with registration. Falconer Courtney Douds brings a screech owl and a red-tailed hawk and talks through their natural history, biology and what they actually do in the local ecosystem. A live raptor on the lawn of a Victorian mansion is a good Saturday morning for a seven-year-old. (Register through the Mansion; they publish the sign-up but not a street number, so check the confirmation for the meeting point.)
  • SAT Prep Workshop: Math III, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Avenue, 10am. Geometry and trig question types, small group, run by Tarrina Tutors, free, which is the remarkable part. It is week three of a series, so a teen walking in is mid-stream, and the full-length practice test is next Saturday.
  • Inspectadelphia: Red Flags When House Hunting, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 10:30am. Micah Forsyth of Inspectadelphia on what to look for in older homes, newer homes and flipped homes. Outdated electrical, water management, basements. Free. If you are even vaguely house-hunting, this is a better hour than most paid seminars.
  • Fall Yoga at Grumblethorpe, 5267 Germantown Avenue, 11am to 12pm. Free, family-friendly, no registration. Black Girls with Green Thumbs in the Grumblethorpe garden, and this is the third and last session of the series, so take it while it is there.
  • Germantown Community Archiving Fair, Joseph E. Coleman Library, 68 W Chelten Avenue, 12 to 4pm. Free with registration. Bring photos, documents and VHS tapes and get them scanned, build a scrapbook, record an oral history, or start tracing your family roots, with conversations and storytelling running alongside. Of everything on this week’s list, this is the one people will thank themselves for in ten years. Bring the shoebox from the closet.
  • Soap Making Workshop, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 12:30pm. Fall scents, free, and under-8s need a participating adult. Space is limited, so call 215-685-9293 ahead, especially if you are bringing a group.
  • Community is Magic: a fundraiser for Crossroads Women’s Center, 1 to 4pm. Free to enter, all ages, donations to the Center, which is rebuilding after the July 3rd fire. Karen Smith and Friends put it together, sponsored by the Johnson House Historic Site, with music, spoken word, an open mic, a raffle and food from Malelani Cafe. One gap: the venue is not published anywhere we could find. The Johnson House is named as the sponsor, not the location, so check before you set out.
  • Film Classics of the Silent Era: “The Kid Brother” (1927), Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Avenue, 1 to 3pm. Harold Lloyd as a sheriff’s timid son who gets his shot when a con-artist medicine show rolls into town. Third of four, curated by local film historian Andrew Gilmore, and the curation is the point, this is not a streaming playlist. Free. The series closes next Saturday with “Sunrise”.
  • Movie: Night of the Living Dead, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 2pm. Public-domain Romero in a library meeting room in October. Free.
  • Nature Has Something to Teach Us: Reframing American Landscapes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Avenue, 2 to 3:30pm. Caroline Gillaspie, Assistant Curator of American Paintings and Drawing at the Met, on how she reinstalled the Met’s American landscape galleries, the environmental framing, the Indigenous perspectives and the display choices behind them. Free with registration. A Met curator giving a free talk on Germantown Avenue is not a normal Saturday.
  • Discovering: Chestnut Hill’s St. Martin’s Neighborhood, Chestnut Hill Conservancy, 2 to 4pm. $25 members, $40 non-members, advance registration required and tickets are limited. Architect and city planner Richard Bartholomew leads a walking tour through one of the most deliberately planned residential neighborhoods in the city, starting with Henry Howard Houston’s vision for Wissahickon Heights in the late 1800s. The meeting location is emailed to registrants about two days ahead, so book early enough to receive it. Rain date Sunday October 18. Note it runs directly against the Woodmere talk, so you are picking one.
  • Ubuntu Fine Art Gallery turns five, 5423 Germantown Avenue, 3 to 7pm, with a DJ-led kickback from 7 to 9. The anniversary doubles as the launch of Steven CW Taylor’s new book, “Photography: A Way of Seeing,” on camera and fine-art printing fundamentals, workflow, camera history and the philosophy of the thing. Light refreshments.
  • Discover the Wissahickon: Toleration Trail Hike, Friends of the Wissahickon, meet at the White Trail entrance at W Hortter Street and Park Line Drive, 3 to 5pm. Moderately difficult, rocky trail with steep elevation changes, not a stroller hike. Registration required so they can reach you about cancellations. Plenty of free street parking along Park Line Drive, which is the easy part, plus buses 53 and 65. Composting toilet at Kitchen’s Lane about halfway. A 3pm October start puts you at the Toleration statue near golden hour, and that is the photograph.
  • Germantown Historical Society film screenings and crafts, 5501 Germantown Avenue, 5 to 7pm. Last of the three evenings.
  • Lantern Night at Monastery Stables, 1000 Kitchens Lane, 5 to 7pm, $75, ticketed. Live jazz, wine from a local winery, a horse demonstration and a raffle, plus a first look at the Stables’ Vision 2030 plans to widen access to horses, nature and community programming in the Wissahickon. The most under-known institution in the park, and if you have hiked past the paddocks and wondered, this is the evening to go in.
  • The Danny Lynch Project, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 8 to 11pm.

Sunday, October 18

All Free Library branches are closed Sundays, which is why there is no library programming here. Woodmere, on the other hand, is free every Sunday.

  • Harvest Fest 2026, The Farm at Awbury, 6336 Ardleigh Street, 11am to 4pm, free admission. Local artisans and crafts, hayrides, horse rides, apples, pumpkins, food, local brews, live music, and the Philly Goat Project goats out in the afternoon with their own programming from 1 to 3. Pedestrian entrances at 6336 Ardleigh Street and 901 E Washington Lane, free street parking on Ardleigh and Washington Lane, and the on-site spaces are reserved for visitors with disabilities, so plan on walking in. Last year’s edition charged separately for hayrides, so expect a few paid add-ons even though the gate is free. No rain plan is published.
  • West Mt. Airy Historic House Tour, pick up your wristband, program and map at Commons & Commons, 30 Pelham Road, noon to 4pm with pickup open until 2pm. $35 in advance, $40 day of, presented by Mt. Airy Learning Tree and West Mt. Airy Neighbors. Space is limited and it has sold out in past years, so register before Sunday, online, at the MALT office, or by phone at 215-843-6333. Four hours inside houses you have walked past for years is the single best way to understand why West Mt. Airy looks the way it does.
  • Eagles vs. Panthers watch party, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley Street. Kickoff is 1:00pm on CBS, at the Linc. Attic’s listing does not print a door time, so treat 1pm as your anchor and get there earlier if you want a seat.
  • Sunday Football Specials, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 1 to 8pm. $10 food specials, $5 select drafts, $6 White Claws, $7 Bird Gang Breeze. Weekly, and this week the 1pm kickoff lines up with the open.
  • Music and Musicians at the Foodery, with Manouche, The Foodery on Ridge, 6148 Ridge Avenue, 3 to 5pm. The weekly bluegrass and old-time folk jam. Free.
  • Open Mic, The Grape, 105 Grape Street, 6 to 10pm. Clipboard sign-up in person at 6, then 15-minute sets.
  • Last day to vote in the Scarecrow Walk, Morris Arboretum, 100 E Northwestern Avenue. See “Open all week.” The scarecrows stay up until November 1 but the ballot closes tonight.

Monday, October 19

  • Preschool Storytime, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 2pm. Free.
  • Is This for Real? AI Scams, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Lane, 2pm. How to tell a real text, voice message or video from a generated one, plus what to do about it. Aimed at adults and seniors, free, and extremely timely. If you have a parent who keeps forwarding you things, this is the hour.
  • LEAP: Mindful Monday, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 4pm. Free.
  • Story to Screen with L’il Filmmakers, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 4 to 6pm. Free, ages 11 to 18, five Monday sessions. Registration was required and it closed on October 12, so this one is a heads-up for the next run rather than something you can join Monday.
  • Magic the Gathering at the Library, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 5 to 6:30pm. Teens and adults, drop in, free cards while they last and raffles for merch. Free.
  • Trivia Night with Brewtanant Dan, Twisted Gingers, 4317 Fleming Street, 6:30 to 9pm.
  • Open Mic, Wissahickon Brewing Company, 3705 W Schoolhouse Lane, 6:30 to 10pm. Weekly.
  • Quizzo at The Rook, 4001 Cresson Street, 7 to 10pm.

Tuesday, October 20

The busiest weeknight of the week, and almost all of it is free.

  • Sprouts, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Road, 9:30 to 11am. Same toddler class as Thursday. $20 members, $25 non-members, pre-registration required.
  • Fall Fun Makers, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Road, 10am to 1pm. Volunteer prep day for Halloween Hikes and Hayrides: building s’mores kits, carving jack-o’-lanterns, crafts, decorating. Free, registration required, 18 and up. And you get a complimentary ticket to Halloween Hikes and Hayrides for showing up, which is a $20 to $33 value for three hours of pumpkin carving. Best trade on this week’s list.
  • Baby Storytime, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 11:15am. Free.
  • Chat-n-Chew Book Club, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Lane, 12pm. The second half of “Kin” by Tayari Jones. It meets roughly monthly, so joining mid-book is a little awkward, but they will have you.
  • Riverside Bike Ride, Friends of the Wissahickon, meet at the Regal UA Main Street theater lot, 3720 Main Street, 1 to 4pm. Roughly 17 miles, with an optional 3 to 4 mile add-on to Historic RittenhouseTown on the Wissahickon bike trail. The route crosses Wissahickon Creek, runs Kelly Drive past the art museum down to Schuylkill Banks, over the cable-stay bridges and back via MLK Drive and the Falls Bridge. Registration required, 18 and up. Plenty of parking in the theater lot, which is the best parking situation of any event this week, plus Regional Rail and buses 9, 27 and 61. Bathroom stop at Cosmic Cafe about a quarter in. Helmets, blinky lights on at the start, bring water. Rain date October 30.
  • Home Farm Club, Wyck, 6026 Germantown Avenue, 4 to 6pm. The afternoon slot, free, no registration.
  • LEAP Literacy, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 4pm. Free.
  • Board and Card Games, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 5pm. Free.
  • Yarntastic Philly, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 5 to 6:30pm. Bring your own yarn and project. Explicitly not a class, a sit-and-stitch. Free.
  • Tuesday Night Music, Manayunk Bridge Garden, 100 Dupont Street, 5:30 to 8:30pm. Outdoor live music.
  • Chess Club, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 5:30 to 6:30pm. A half-hour lecture from Coach Chris then free play, boards and clocks provided, all ages and levels. Free.
  • 3D Printing for Kids, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 6 to 6:45pm. Nivita from Girls Who Code teaching grades 5 to 8 on a MakerBot, materials provided. Free.
  • Jazz Jam Sessions, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 7 to 10pm. Weekly.

Wednesday, October 21

  • October Storytime, Morris Arboretum and Gardens, Outdoor Classroom, 100 E Northwestern Avenue, 10:30am. Spooky-season storytime, costumes encouraged, scarecrow craft, which ties it straight to the Scarecrow Walk on the same grounds. Free with general admission. Outdoor classroom, so weather dependent.
  • Outdoor Baby Storytime, Roxborough Library, held outside at the Gorgas Park entrance at Hermitage Street, 10:30am. Outdoors unless the weather says otherwise. Free.
  • Quiet Meditation at the Library, Roxborough Library meeting room, 6245 Ridge Avenue, 11:30am, about an hour. A guided session with Cameron McMillan that samples several practices. Adults and seniors, free.
  • Meet the Author! Jaylene Clark Owens, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 12:30pm. A reading of “A Black Girl and Her Braids” with songs and activities, best for ages 3 to 8. Free copies of the book while supplies last, which is the real draw. Space is limited.
  • Burger and Brew, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 12 to 9pm. A 6oz burger and a 12oz beer, all day every Wednesday.
  • LEAP: Crafternoon, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Avenue, 3:30pm. Free.
  • Girl Dinner, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main Street, 4 to 9pm, $25.
  • Ask the Experts: Connected Homes, Chestnut Hill Conservancy, 6 to 8:30pm. Free, and hybrid, with limited in-person seating in Chestnut Hill plus virtual attendance. Kate MacDougall, a Senior Risk Consultant and Historic Home Specialist at Chubb, with colleague Kevin Chung, on how connected technology can actually help you protect and maintain an old house: leak detection, risk reduction, and the particular considerations that come with a historic building. If you own anything built before 1940 up here, this is the most directly useful free hour of the week. Register through the Conservancy, and note the in-person seats are limited.
  • Valley Talk: Into the Weeds, Foraging for Invasive Plants in Pennsylvania, with Tama Matsuoka Wong, Friends of the Wissahickon at the Valley Green Inn, Valley Green Road, 6 to 7:30pm, or on Zoom. Eat-the-invasives, which is the most satisfying possible answer to the knotweed problem. Registration required, and the in-person and the Zoom registrations are two different forms, so read before you click. Valley Green parking is tight on a weeknight, so allow time.
  • Weavers Way Fall 2026 General Membership Meeting, Commodore Barry Club, 6815 Emlen Street, 6 to 8pm, in the main ballroom. In person, with street parking and transit access. If you have ever wondered who actually runs your co-op, this is the room. Members.
  • Open Mic at the Dawson, Dawson Street Pub, sign-up at 7, music starts at 8.

Open all week

  • 19th Annual Scarecrow Walk, “From 1776 to the Future: Celebrating the 70s Across Time”, Morris Arboretum and Gardens, 100 E Northwestern Avenue, on display through November 1. Fifty-odd scarecrows built by the public around the 1770s, the 1970s, the 2070s, or any decade ending in 70. Free with general admission ($22 adults, $20 seniors 65 and up, $12 youth 3 to 17, under 2 free). On-site voting closes Sunday October 18, with cash prizes of $300, $200 and $100.
  • Pumpkin Cottage and Pumpkin Promenade, Morris Arboretum, 100 E Northwestern Avenue, running through ArBOOretum month. A hundred-square-foot cottage covered in hundreds of pumpkins at the end of a pumpkin-lined trail, nodding to when this stretch was known as Pumpkintown. It is unapologetically a photo spot. Free with general admission.
  • Garden Highlights Tour, Morris Arboretum, meet at the Welcome Center, weekdays 10:30am and weekends 1pm, through November 25. The guide shapes it around whoever turns up, so it is worth doing more than once. Free with general admission, weather permitting.
  • “HOW DO YOU FEEL”, iMPeRFeCT Gallery, 5539 Germantown Avenue, through November 7. More than 100 artists across painting, sculpture, pottery, mosaics and photography.
  • Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Avenue, Wednesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm, closed Monday and Tuesday. $15 adults, $10 seniors 55 and up, free for under 18, students, teachers and members, and free every Sunday, which makes October 18 the cheap culture play of the week. Grounds open dawn to dusk daily.
  • Cliveden 2026 House Tour Season, Thursday to Sunday, 12 to 4pm, tours on the hour with the last tour at 3pm, about an hour long. Tours start at the Cliveden Barn, 98 E Cliveden Street, not at the main gate on Germantown Avenue. If you have lived here ten years and never been inside the 1767 Chew mansion, this is the month to fix that.
  • Johnson House Historic Site, 6306 Germantown Avenue, Friday and Saturday only, 12 to 4pm, tours at 12, 1, 2 and 3. $15 adults, $10 seniors 55 and up, $5 students and children 12 and under. Cash on arrival, and tours are by appointment with about a week’s notice, so this is one to book now for later rather than walk up to.
  • Awbury Arboretum and The Farm at Awbury, pedestrian entrances at 6336 Ardleigh Street and 901 E Washington Lane, dawn to dusk, year round, free. Free street parking on Ardleigh and Washington Lane, with the on-site spaces reserved for visitors with disabilities. Leashed dogs welcome, out of the garden beds. Groups of ten or more should call 215-849-2885 first. One note: AdventureWoods, the natural playground, currently reads closed on Awbury’s own hours page, so do not make the trip for it.

A word on the weather, since half of this week is outdoors

Three volunteer days, three different policies, and if the forecast turns this is the most useful thing we can tell you. Friends of the Wissahickon service days cancel in steady precipitation. FOW hikes cancel in heavy rain, extreme heat, mud or ice. The Schuylkill Center tree planting goes rain or shine, and they will only call it off for genuinely severe weather. Harvest Fest and both Saturday festivals have published no rain date at all, so if Saturday or Sunday looks bad, check their socials before you load the car. The one event with a published rain date is the Conservancy’s St. Martin’s walking tour, which moves to Sunday.

And a bathroom map, because nobody else publishes one: composting toilet at Kitchen’s Lane (Thursday’s service day, Saturday’s planting, and midway on the Toleration hike), a Cosmic Cafe stop about a quarter into Tuesday’s bike ride, and real facilities at Morris, the Schuylkill Center and Woodmere.

Coming up just past this window

Next weekend is the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta, Saturday October 24 and Sunday October 25, racing from 8am Saturday and 7:45am Sunday, with the spectator hub near the Three Angels statues. The part you need now: Kelly Drive between the Strawberry Mansion Bridge and Fountain Green Drive is restricted to vehicles with event access passes from noon on Friday October 23 through 6pm on Sunday October 25. That is a Friday-afternoon problem for anyone in East Falls, so plan around it before the weekend. Off-site parking runs $20 a day with free continuous shuttles.

Also next week: Halloween Hikes and Hayrides at the Schuylkill Center, Friday October 23 and Saturday October 24, $20 to $33, and it does sell out, so buy now. Chestnut Hill Library closes its silent film series with “Sunrise” on Saturday October 24 at 1pm, free, with the SAT practice test that morning at 10. Allens Lane opens the Clark exhibition “Attracted Opposites” with a reception Saturday October 24, 6 to 8pm. Ornette Coleman at Woodmere on October 23, sold out like the rest of the series. Friends of Vernon Park hold their Community Bazaar and Flea Market Saturday October 24, 9am to 3pm, at 5800 Germantown Avenue. And the Germantown Literacy Fair returns to the Coleman Library that same day, 10am to 2pm, free, with book giveaways and read-alouds.

Know about something we missed? Send it to hello@nwphilly.com and we will get it in next week’s calendar. Neighborhood meetings, stoop sales, gallery openings, your kid’s band’s first show, all of it counts.

And the usual: confirm with the venue before you drive over. Times move, weather happens, and a surprising number of calendars out here are still quietly serving last year’s dates. We caught four of them this week alone.

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