Atlanta’s weird and wonderful October events

In Atlanta, October is a busy month. Calendars are packed with simultaneous LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations and Halloween events, with celebrations and parties ranging from a Vampire Ball at Underground Atlanta to drag at City Winery. 

There are plenty of typical October events, like pumpkin patches and haunted houses to choose from in and around the city. But certain neighborhoods also become a haven for the “weird” in the city. 

Little Five Points has long had a reputation as the city’s haven for artists and counterculture, often called the “bohemian” center of the region. The neighborhood’s Business Association President Kelly Stocks said people often tell her its “Halloween every day in Little Five.” 

The neighborhood has changed over the years. According to Stocks, who has been in the area since the 1980s, Little Five Points used to be home to the “misfits” and music culture. She recalls bands like R.E.M. and Indigo Girls as frequent visitors. 

“It was really the only palace in Atlanta that had all the arts, the theater, music, ” Stocks said. “We’ve always been a safe haven for creatives.” 

In the 1980 and 1990s, she said many people who lived and worked in the neighborhood were in bands and artists. Now, the landscape is different — some longtime residents have died, and others have been priced out. The business association president said its put the neighborhood in a sort of “identity crisis.” 

But the creative character is still around, and it comes out in full swing for the October festival. While the festival formally began over twenty years ago, Stocks said there has been some version of Halloween festivals and events going on since the 1970s. In the 1980s, she proposed a parade but couldn’t get a permit. 

Today’s iteration is a bigger version of her vision from all those years ago. In recent years, it’s expanded from a one-day festival to a whole weekend of events. Beyond dozens of vendors selling vintage clothes, jewelry made from doll heads, local arts and crafts and other creative wares, the weekend features walkthrough events and sticker hunts. 

This year from Oct. 19 to 20 the festival will feature its typical parade and market, alongside a “Halloweenville” immersive exhibit, sticker hunt, photo contest and Deep South wrestling. 

Stocks said it’s a challenge to maintain the artsy reputation with new events year after year, but she keeps coming back because of how it turns out. 

“It’s part of our identity,” Stocks said. “That’s what we’re known for, is Halloween.” 

Atlanta’s offbeat identity is expanding past the Little Five Points perimeter this year, too. On Oct. 19, after the Saturday festival, Chantelle Rytter and the Krewe of Grateful Gluttons will host “Where the Weird Things Are: An Upside Down Parade” in Old Fourth Ward Park at 7 p.m. 

Rytter and the krewe have spent 14 years helming the annual Lantern Parade on the Beltline, where hundreds of participants and thousands of spectators join in a path packed with handmade lanterns and puppets. This year, they’re partnering with the Beltline for a new parade concept.

“Where the Weird Things Are” flips the krewe’s traditional parade arts on its head. Instead of walking through a crowd, the crowd will come to a group of stationary puppets to walk around the “weird” creations. Throughout the hour-long event there will be live music, storytime from Rytter and a conga line around the Old Fourth Ward Park pond. 

“We aim to honor the mystical creatures that live in the wild places of our own imaginations on the Atlanta Beltline,” Rytter said.

The October event started as a pop-up parade in Reynoldstown this year, but Rytter and the krewe opted for a flipped parade concept so the crowd and puppeteers can “spend more time delighting each other.” 

For Rytter, the new event is a way to create a “weird’ and creative sense of place in Atlanta. 

“We want there to be weird things, and we want the weird thing to have their night, right,” Rytter said. “So we’re going to turn a parade upside down to call them.
 

The Oct. 19 event is rooted in Rytter’s love for regional local lore and legends. 

“You know, Georgia leans back against Appalachia and has its feet in the coastal South, and this is where the weird things are,” Rytter said. “We’re surrounded by lots of local lore and legend, but I feel like we just haven’t been listening closely to our own.” 

Now. she hopes people will be able to create their own lore by designing creatures “born from their imagination.” She sees imagination as the root of folk tales and lore in areas like Appalachia and wants to start it in the city. 

“We want there to be mysteries and magic in the world,” Rytter said. 

People will be able to participate in “Weird Thing” workshops at the krewe’s studio with guest parade artist Henry Lipkis, a founder of the New Orleans Monster Parade. One of Rytter’s own creations is the “Kudzulu, lord of the vines,” and she encourages participants to make similarly weird creations. 

Ultimately, Rytter sees events like the “upside-down” parade and the annual Little Five Points Halloween festival and parade as a way of place-making in Atlanta. 

“That is where you’re going to see who lives there, what they like, what they think is funny, what they do with their imaginative free time,” Rytter said. “You get a great sense of what a place is like in parades, so the community seeing itself as wonderfully weird, playfully delightful, you know, sprung from the imaginations of here is just a good thing.

The Atlanta Little Five Points Festival will take place on Oct. 19 and 20, with the parade on Oct. 20 at 2 p.m. The in “Where the Weird Things Are: An Upside Down Parade” will take place Oct. 19 at the Old Fourth Ward Park amphitheater at 7 p.m.