DENVER — The Baker neighborhood was in the main spotlight Saturday as thousands of people came for the first-ever PorchFest in the Mile High City. The concept is fairly simple: bands perform on people's front porches and all are welcome to listen and enjoy.
Bradley Schwartz, the festival's lead organizer, said after playing at Atlanta's PorchFest, he was shocked Denver did not have this festival. It was months of hard work and "a lot of chaos," but Schwartz was determined and the festival featured 193 bands at 85 locations.
"There's a lot of cities that do this. I went to Atlanta, but Chicago has one, Boston has one, DC, you name it. Most of the large cities do and it's like a local holiday there, people know about it. People in Atlanta like plan around [it] like invite their friends in town, plan their weekend around it and I think that that should be the case here," Schwartz said.
Schwartz wasn’t alone in the excitement. Thousands of music lovers filled the neighborhood, bringing an unmistakable energy to the celebration. Kamolrat Limpapath, owner of Lucky Noodles, welcomed many hungry customers inside who needed to fuel up from all the music.
"This is good for community. It's good for the business. It's good for everybody. Everybody gathering today, that's very nice," Limpapath said.
The same sentiment was echoed by Luke Johnson, the president of the board for the Broadway General Improvement District. He's also a business owner in the area and was thrilled to see all the foot traffic on Broadway.
"We're a little bit irreverent at times here on the street and so seeing like young artists get to play and do it in a place where they don't have to spend a ton of money on a club or a concert like that is the beauty of of not just a street, but what small businesses get to do here, too," Johnson said.
The energy along South Broadway isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Johnson said the neighborhood is gearing up for a busy October, including a Halloween parade on Oct. 17 and the Broadway bar crawl on Oct. 24.
"I opened my business on Broadway ten years ago because I saw the street and I believed in it, and I thought that it had really great potential to be an awesome place and it was kind of up and coming even then. I think now this is just version 2.0 of it. So, yeah, come down and check it out," Johnson said.
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