The annual Easter Promenade on South Street draws festive costumes, despite the rain
The 93rd Easter Promenade was sparsely attended due to bad weather, but those who showed up sported brilliant and beautiful outfits.
This year, Philadelphia’s almost century-old Easter Promenade had to make do with no parade and a small crowd amid bucketing rain.
But that didn’t stop the event’s hardcore fans from coming out in outrageous, elaborately decorated costumes to brighten a gray and wet Easter Sunday.
Longtime Easter Promenade ringleader Henri David stayed up late Saturday night making a new, rain-resistant hat for his outfit. The bauble-bedazzled headwear featured huge false jellybeans and weighed an estimated 20 pounds.
“I’m in a lot of pain, but you suffer what you have to,” said David, who has led these Easter festivities since the 1980s. “I’m never going to stop. As long as we can do it, we’re going to do it.”
The crowd was in a merry mood despite the weather, fueled by free jelly beans from local confectioner Frankford Candy.
Northeast Philadelphia car dealer Gary Barbera usually lends the party vehicles for the parade, but this year he had his bear mascot amble around the Headhouse Shambles — where the various competitions were judged — and parked a Tesla Cybertruck festooned with ads near the celebration.
Barbera also helped judge the nine competitions, which included awards for categories like “best razzle dazzle.” (That one was won by South Philadelphia’s Michael Swiencki, wearing a huge mask of an Easter Island statue head and a brilliant purple suit.)
Another judge, Jamel Workman, sported a kelly green top hat inspired by the Mad Hatter. He is one of the few milliners left in Philadelphia.
“My thing is just to restore the art and revive the art of millinery, because it started here in Philadelphia with the Stetson company,” said Workman. “It really is becoming a lost art.”
State Sen. Nikil Saval attended the event with his family, and City Councilmember Mark Squilla was among the judges, along with Monica Thompson of Oxymoron Fashion House and Binh Nguyen of Visit Philly.
The Easter Promenade is organized by the South Street Headhouse District, which counts attendees by the number of bunny ears distributed.
During a normal year — when the weather is less inclement — they give out 1,000 to 1,500. This year only a couple hundred bunny ears were taken, and the crowd beneath the shambles numbered a few dozen.
“I was crestfallen at the weather forecast, I kept willing it not to be,” said Eleanor Ingersoll, director of the South Street Headhouse District, who says that their festivals and parties have enjoyed nearly universal good weather in recent years.
South Street Headhouse will host SpringFest on Saturday, May 2, which attracts upward of 30,000 guests. Ingersoll hopes that the weather will be more cooperative by then.
“I’ve been saying that Mother Nature loves the South Street district. Today we had to balance the scales,” said Ingersoll.