NW Philly This Week: September 24–30

ByAlex Aberle

Your week in Northwest Philadelphia, Thursday September 24 through Wednesday September 30.

Sunday belongs to the Avenue. Fall for the Arts takes over Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill from Willow Grove to Rex, more than three hundred artists and makers, eleven to five, free. If you have lived up here longer than a year you already know to leave the car at home. If you are new, consider this your heads up: this is the one Sunday all year when you can walk six blocks of Germantown Avenue in the middle of the street.

It is also the last weekend of Parks on Tap at Cliveden Park, which closes Sunday night and does not come back until next summer. And the Wissahickon is in its best two weeks. Fall migration is on, which is why there are three separate bird and wildlife walks on the calendar (two of them free) and why Lovett is lending out binoculars.

The rest of the week is the good ordinary stuff. Seven library branches running storytimes and craft clubs and a Magic the Gathering night, a papermaking workshop at Morris built around plants grown on the grounds, flax processing at Wyck with the Pennsylvania Flax Project, Manayunk’s first ever Oktoberfest, a jazz jam in a Germantown taproom, and an eighteen and over circus show on Greene Street that is the tail end of the Fringe. Also the Eagles play Monday night, not Sunday, which is the single most useful piece of scheduling information in this entire post.

Sunday’s big one: Fall for the Arts

Germantown Avenue closes and the whole Hill turns into an open air market. Sunday September 27, 11am to 5pm, Germantown Avenue between Willow Grove and Rex, free.

More than three hundred artists and makers set up along the Avenue: paintings, pottery, sculpture, photography, jewelry, woodworking. The part worth planning around is Makers Village, where people demonstrate the work rather than just sell it, and there are interactive workshops scattered through the day plus live music along the length of the festival. The galleries stay open, NoName, The Little Gallery and Gravers Lane among them, and every restaurant on the Avenue will be doing the best business of its year. There is children’s and family arts programming, though the specifics were not published as of Thursday morning.

If it rains, the rain date is Sunday October 11.

One honest gap: as of this writing the Business District has not published the 2026 closure hours, the exact block boundaries, or any parking guidance. The Avenue does close to traffic for this, and the festival footprint has historically run roughly the 8000 to 8600 blocks, which matches the Willow Grove to Rex range. But if you are planning around a specific street, or you need to get a car out of a driveway on the Avenue Sunday morning, call the Business District at 215-247-6696 rather than trusting us on it.

Our advice, unchanged every year: take the train. Chestnut Hill has two of them.

Thursday, September 24

  • Awbury Wellness Walk, The Farm at Awbury, 6336 Ardleigh St, 7 to 8am. Free. A moderately paced group stroll across Awbury’s fifty six acres of gardens, woodland, farm, ponds and meadow. Starting your Thursday this way is a genuinely different kind of day.
  • Thursday Volunteer Service Day, Friends of the Wissahickon, meeting at the Wigard Avenue Trailhead, 726 Wigard Ave, 9am to 12pm. Free, registration required. Trail work and invasive plant removal with long handled tools, all provided, no experience needed. Sturdy shoes, long pants, bring water, and note there are no restrooms at this one.
  • Sprouts, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Rd, 9:30 to 11am. $20 members, $25 non members, registration required. Sensory nature class for eighteen months to three years with a caregiver, built out of the center’s Nature Preschool approach.
  • Native Planters, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Rd, 10am to 12pm. Free, registration recommended. Volunteer gardening in the courtyard and entrance native plant beds, tools provided, running every Thursday through October 29.
  • Storytime with Ms. Prather, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 10:30am. Free. Stories, songs, rhymes and dancing, best for infants through preschool. Groups need to call ahead, 215-685-9290.
  • Baby and Toddler Storytime, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 10:30am. Free. Mr. Nate, stories, movement and songs, ages zero to three with a caregiver.
  • Thursday Noon Bird Walk, Wissahickon Environmental Center, 300 W Northwestern Ave, 12 to 1pm. Registration required through Eventbrite. A guided hour through the Andorra Natural Area’s habitats, and this is peak fall migration, so the timing is not accidental.
  • Build It Club, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 3 to 4:30pm. Free. LEGO, Magna Tiles, Bionicles and wooden blocks, preschool and up.
  • Crafternoon, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 3:30pm. Free. A different craft every week, kids and teens.
  • Girl Dinner, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 4pm. The recurring Thursday food and drink special, and yes, that is what they call it.
  • Parks on Tap, Cliveden Park, 4 to 10pm. Free to enter, food and drink for purchase. Stop twenty four of twenty six, and this is its second to last stretch in Northwest Philly this year.
  • Neighborhood Night, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Rd, 6 to 8pm. Free, registration required. Drinks, light food and a behind the scenes look at what the center is working on. If you have driven past the Hagys Mill Road sign for years without going in, this is the low commitment way to fix that.
  • Bingo, The Rook, 4001 Cresson St, 7 to 9pm. Free to play.
  • Adult Art Club, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 7 to 9pm. $10 to the host, Eventbrite registration, and the taproom stays open to everyone else. Monthly, judgment free, materials provided or bring whatever you are already stuck on.
  • Philly Folk and Bluegrass, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Ave, 7pm, doors at 6:30. $20. Eleven regional folk and bluegrass acts in one night, emceed by Heidi Hoskins, put on by the Philadelphia Folksong Society’s Musical Artist Cooperative, with proceeds going back to the club. Eleven acts for twenty dollars is not a typo.
  • “These Shining Lives”, The Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Ave, 7:30pm. $20 on Thursdays, which is the cheapest night of the run. Four young women find friendship and real money at a 1920s radium dial factory, then learn what the work has done to them. It is a hard play and a very good one.

Friday, September 25

  • Flax Processing with the PA Flax Project, Wyck, 6026 Germantown Ave, 10am to 1pm. Eventbrite registration required, price not posted. Hands on flax processing, which is exactly as niche and as satisfying as it sounds, and Wyck is the right building for it.
  • Caregiver and Me Yoga, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 10:30 to 11am. Free, registration required. Mindfulness and movement for caregivers with children age one and up, with instructor Tori Reino.
  • Infant and Toddler Playgroup, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 10:30am. Free. Books, toys and music, babies and toddlers with a caregiver.
  • Papermaking with the Plants Around Us, Morris Arboretum and Gardens, 100 E Northwestern Ave, 12:30 to 3pm. $30 members, $35 non members, registration required. Emily Tipps of the University of Utah Book Arts Program teaches hand papermaking from locally grown material, including a walk through the grounds to see the plants going into the sheets. You leave with your own paper.
  • Cut and Paste: Paper Craft Club, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 3501 Midvale Ave, 1pm. Free. Monthly self directed collage, card making and junk journaling, supplies provided.
  • PA CareerLink Job Search Assistance, Lovett Memorial Library, 6945 Germantown Ave, 2 to 4:30pm. Free. One on one time with a Community Workforce Connector, resume help and career counseling. Quietly one of the most valuable things the library does.
  • Teen Video Games, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 3 to 4:30pm. Free. Switch and free snacks, ages twelve to eighteen.
  • Table-Top Tennis, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Ln, 3 to 4:30pm. Free, ages seven and up. They build the paddles out of everyday materials first, which is the good part.
  • $5 Fridays, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 3 to 6pm. Select $5 drafts and $5 cocktails, every Friday.
  • Crochet Club, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 3:30pm. Free.
  • Moon Weaving Project, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 3:30pm. Free. Today is the Mid Autumn Festival, so the craft is a woven moon. Kids and teens.
  • Parks on Tap, Cliveden Park, 4 to 10pm. Free to enter.
  • Live Music in the Beer Garden, Sister Blue, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 6pm. Free. The beer garden band every Friday, and Attic’s garden is still the best place in Germantown to end a work week.
  • Friday Night Jazz, “Listen with your Eyes: Charlie Parker”, Woodmere Art Museum, Charles Knox Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Ave, 6pm. $28 general, $18 members. The Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble with saxophonist Michael Clay on Parker’s music, with the Lifeline Music Coalition. Bird in that room is a good Friday.
  • Nocturnal Wildlife Walk, Wissahickon Environmental Center, 300 W Northwestern Ave, 6:30 to 7:30pm. Registration required through Eventbrite. Tony Croasdale leads a walk after screech owls, great horned owls and the Southern flying squirrel. Yes, there are flying squirrels in the Wissahickon. Yes, that is the whole reason to go.
  • Quidnunk and Friends, The Foodery on Ridge, 6148 Ridge Ave, 7 to 9pm. Free live music.
  • “These Shining Lives”, The Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Ave, 7:30pm. $26.
  • SALOONIVERSE, DAM Circus at Circus Campus, 6452 Greene St, 7:30pm. $30 general, pay what you can from $10. Fringe circus, eighteen and over, with nudity, adult language, strobe, fog and audience interaction. The 9pm show that night is cancelled, so 7:30 is the only one. This is the last Fringe weekend, and Circus Campus is genuinely one of the strangest and best rooms in Germantown.
  • The No Good Crowd, “Unproper” album release, with The Lazy Villians, The Fallser Club, 3721 Midvale Ave, 8 to 10:30pm. Ticketed, price not listed.
  • Friday Night Quizzo, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 8:30pm.

Saturday, September 26

Saturday is the crowded one. If you want a plan rather than a list: start in the Wissahickon at nine for the Public Lands Day workday, be on the Avenue in Chestnut Hill by ten for the farmers market, and then pick a lane. West of the creek is Manayunk Oktoberfest at noon. East of it is goats at Awbury at noon and Parks on Tap at Cliveden all afternoon. You cannot do both halves and you should not try.

  • UltraTrax Endurance Walk, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Rd, 6am to 6pm. $76 to $136, registration required. A looped endurance walk through forest, meadow and trail with steady climbing. Note the service item below: the Schuylkill Center is closed to everyone else all day for this.
  • National Public Lands Day Volunteer Service Day, Friends of the Wissahickon, meeting at Monastery Stables, 1000 Kitchens Ln, 9am to 12pm. Free, registration required. Trail work, invasive removal and litter cleanup, in partnership with Gay for Good. Tools, gloves and instruction provided.
  • Chestnut Hill Farmers Market, Germantown Avenue at Mermaid Lane, in front of The Mermaid Inn, 9am to 12pm. Free to browse. One of the longest running markets in the city, and the last one before the Avenue gets taken over on Sunday.
  • SAT Prep Workshop, Reading and Writing II, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 10am. Free. Small group session with Tarrina Tutors on expression of ideas and Standard English conventions. Free SAT prep is not a thing you find often.
  • Sit and Stitch, Falls of Schuylkill Library, 3501 Midvale Ave, 10:30am. Free, drop in. Knitting, crochet and embroidery in the adult area, no signup.
  • Fall Migration Bird Walk with Holger Pflicke, Lovett Memorial Library, 6945 Germantown Ave, 10:30am. Free. About two hours outdoors over varying wooded terrain with an expert birder, so bring water and bug spray. The library lends Birding Backpacks with binoculars and a field guide, and there is a limited supply, so get there early if you need a pair.
  • Shake Your Own Butter, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 11am. Free. You make butter in a jar and you take the butter home. Hard to improve on.
  • Hidden Gems Tour, Morris Arboretum and Gardens, meeting at the Welcome Center, 100 E Northwestern Ave, 11am. Free with general admission. A guided walk to the structures, sculptures and vistas most people walk straight past, with the stories attached.
  • Home Improvement and Energy Efficiency Workshop, Mt. Airy CDC, 6703 Germantown Ave Suite 200, 11am to 2pm. Free, with lunch. Philadelphia Gas Works, Rebuilding Together Philadelphia and Clarifi on home repair options and energy savings, plus a limited number of free recycling bins. If you own an old house up here, and most of us do, this is three hours well spent.
  • Manayunk Oktoberfest, Love City Manayunk, 4323 Main St, 12 to 6pm. Free admission, food and drink for purchase. The inaugural one: Love Fest Oktoberfest beer, Sophie’s BBQ brats, pretzels and beer cheese, a stein holding contest at 2pm and a costume contest at 4pm.
  • Autumn Grief Walk, Philly Goat Project at The Farm at Awbury, 6336 Ardleigh St, 12 to 2pm. Free. A gathering for anyone carrying a loss, however long ago, with optional walks alongside the goats, plus space to talk. The Goat Project does this every year and does it well.
  • Parks on Tap, Cliveden Park, 12 to 10pm. Free to enter, 21 and over.
  • Movie Day, Wadsworth Library, 1500 Wadsworth Ave, 1pm. Free. Family movie with light refreshments, call ahead for large groups.
  • Queer Soup Night for Crossroads Women’s Center, 7165 Germantown Ave, 5 to 7pm. $10 to $20. A soup driven benefit helping rebuild Crossroads Women’s Center after July’s fire.
  • Ted Jordan in concert, Malelani Cafe, 6734 Germantown Ave, 5:30pm. Cost not listed. Malelani’s own page bills him as “the infamous Ted Jordan,” which we are choosing to take at face value. (Worth a quick call to 267-766-2396 to confirm, their listing does not print the year.)
  • “These Shining Lives”, The Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Ave, 7:30pm. $26.
  • The Danny Lynch Project, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 8pm. Live music.

Sunday, September 27

Fall for the Arts is above, and it is the day. Everything here is either what you do before it or what you do instead of it.

  • Fall for the Arts Festival, Germantown Avenue between Willow Grove and Rex, Chestnut Hill, 11am to 5pm. Free. See above.
  • Parks on Tap, final day, Cliveden Park, 12 to 10pm. Free to enter, 21 and over. Last call on the Cliveden stop, and the beer garden does not come back to Northwest Philly this season.
  • Sunday Football Specials, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 1pm. Game day food and drink. Not an Eagles watch party, the Birds are on Monday night this week.
  • Mill Miler Hike, Friends of the Wissahickon, meeting at Bells Mill and Forbidden Drive, 1 to 3:30pm. Registration required, which is also how you get the weather call. A Trail Ambassador leads you past Bells Mill, Thomas Mill and Wises Mill, south on the Orange Trail and back along Forbidden Drive on the far side of the creek. Moderately challenging with steep elevation changes, so this is a hike, not a stroll.
  • Open Mic, The Grape, 105 Grape St, 6 to 10pm. Hosted by ethanzcain, fifteen minute sets or three songs, whichever runs out first.

All seven library branches are closed Sundays, so the quiet morning is real.

Monday, September 28

  • State Representative Tarik Khan, Open Office Hours, Chestnut Hill Library, 8711 Germantown Ave, 4 to 6:45pm. Free, no registration. Staff help with state programs and services. Note that Rep. Khan himself is not scheduled to attend, but his staff are the people who actually untangle things anyway.
  • Movie Monday, “A Million Miles Away”, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 4:30pm. Free. Hispanic Heritage Month screening of the 2023 biopic about Jose Hernandez going from migrant farm work to NASA. Rated PG.
  • Penny Sliders, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Ln, 4:30 to 5:30pm. Free, ages seven and up. Assemblage spinners and a little physics.
  • Magic the Gathering, Roxborough Library, 6245 Ridge Ave, 5 to 6:30pm. Free, drop in, teens and adults. Bring a deck or build one from the library’s cards, and there are merch raffles.
  • Basic Digital Literacy Workshop, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Ln, 5 to 6:30pm. Free. Basic digital skills, cloud storage and smart devices in the computer lab, run by the city’s Office of Information and Technology. Walk ins welcome, registration suggested, 215-685-2843.
  • Open Mic, Wissahickon Brewing Company, 3705 W School House Ln, 6:30 to 10pm. Hosted by Mark Menk, with a rotating food truck.
  • Quizzo, The Rook, 4001 Cresson St, 7 to 10pm.
  • Eagles vs. Bears watch party, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 8:15pm. Free. Monday Night Football in Chicago, with food and drink specials, raffles and a DJ. 8:15pm is the actual kickoff, confirmed against the Eagles’ own schedule.

Tuesday, September 29

Tuesday is thin, which happens, and it is the day to do something with your hands.

  • Sprouts, Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagys Mill Rd, 9:30 to 11am. $20 members, $25 non members, registration required. Same program as Thursday, eighteen months to three years with a caregiver.
  • Retention Pond Volunteering, Friends of the Wissahickon with the Wissahickon Environmental Center, meeting at the Andorra Upper Lot, 990 Northwestern Ave, 10am to 1pm. Free, registration required through Eventbrite. Cutting vines, pulling invasives and planting pollinators around the green infrastructure retention pond off Northwestern. Three hours, real difference, no experience.
  • Jazz Jam Sessions, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 7pm.

Wednesday, September 30

  • Storytime Yoga, Dwight Evans Library of West Oak Lane, 2000 E Washington Ln, 11am. Free, caregiver must stay. Picture books plus beginner yoga, where the kids act out the story as tall trees, fluttering butterflies and sleepy lions.
  • Burger and Brew, Manayunk Brewery, 4120 Main St, 12pm. Weekly burger and beer pairing.
  • Find Your Health on the Hill, Venetian Club, 8030 Germantown Ave, 7 to 9pm. A community health fair. The listing is just a flyer with no vendor list, so we cannot tell you who will be there, only that it is happening.
  • Germantown Jazz Jam, Attic Brewing, 137 Berkley St, 7 to 10pm. Free. Come to play or come to listen. Attic calls it one of their most popular nights of the month and they are not exaggerating.
  • Open Mic at the Dawson, Dawson Street Pub, 100 Dawson St, sign up at 7pm, music at 8pm, until 10pm. The long running one.
  • Open Jam, The Grape, 105 Grape St, 8 to 10:30pm. Free. Bring an instrument or just take up a chair and watch.

Open all week

  • “These Shining Lives” at The Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Ave, runs through October 4. Thursdays $20, Friday and Saturday $26, closing with a 2pm matinee on Sunday October 4.
  • Chestnut Hill Brewing Oktoberfest is on from September 16 through October 18. No dated special this particular week, the next one is bingo on October 1, but the beer is the point.
  • Parks on Tap at Cliveden Park, Thursday through Sunday only, and then it is gone.
  • Peak fall migration in the Wissahickon. Three guided walks this week, two of them free, and Lovett will lend you binoculars.

Before you go

Service notes, which are more useful than most of the above:

  • Sunday: Germantown Avenue closes for Fall for the Arts, roughly Willow Grove to Rex, 11am to 5pm with setup and breakdown either side. The Business District has not published 2026 closure hours or parking guidance, so if you need a car off the Avenue call them at 215-247-6696. Take the train if you can.
  • Saturday: the Schuylkill Center is closed to the general public all day for the UltraTrax event. Do not drive out to Hagys Mill Road expecting to walk the trails.
  • The Eagles play Monday night, not Sunday. Sunday afternoon is free, which is convenient given the festival.
  • In the Wissahickon: nothing is shut, but Friends of the Wissahickon have standing advisories out, a knotweed control pilot at the Upper Valley Green lot, protective fencing on the Yellow Trail near Kitchens Lane for ground nesting wildlife, and ground nesting wasps with a reported locations map. Their conditions page was last updated in April, so it is worth a look before a long walk.

Did we miss something? We probably did. If you run something up here, or you just know about a thing that deserves a wider audience, send it to hello@nwphilly.com and we will get it in next week’s list.

And as always: confirm with the venue before you drive over. Small places change plans, and a calendar is only as fresh as the morning it was written.

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