PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — "Today was a sad day. It was a sad day for me."
Michelle Gambino, the producer of the South 9th Street Italian Market Festival, shared painful words Wednesday following news that the festival — A South Philadelphia tradition — will be halted again. They will attempt to hold the festival in May 2022.
The South 9th Street Shopping District is open for business as usual, while under new Philadelphia COVID-19 mask and vaccination mandates.
"We were hoping that this event would be like a comeback event ... a post-COVID comeback event, and people were just going to come out and have a good time and enjoy themselves like they always do, and you have to cancel that," said Gambino.
The board of directors for the event voted Wednesday to cancel the event after the city released its new COVID-19 mask mandate for indoor businesses and some outdoor events. COVID-19 case counts and positive test percentages have multiplied in recent weeks as the delta variant of the virus has spread.
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The festival, typically held in May on South 9th Street, is an anchor event in the Italian Market community, drawing thousands of people. The organization also chose not to hold the May 2020 festival and had postponed the May 2021 event until September.
"But when things loosened up this year recently, we thought we could have a fall, an autumn festival. Our date was Sept. 26. We applied for all the permits and everything we needed, and we put the word out, and we created a website, and we did everything needed to do," Gambino said.
"Today, when the mandate came down from the city, the board decided that it would be best if we did not do the event."
Gambino said that for organizers, safety was the biggest priority, as well as questioning their capability to follow city mask rules with a large street festival involving thousands of people.
The city mandate requires that people wear masks at all outdoor gatherings of more than 1,000 people if there is no assigned seating.
"We definitely don’t want to be a super-spreader event," she said.
"But more importantly, we didn’t feel confident that we could follow the city mandate of people wearing the masks, and because we are going to have thousands of people, how are we going to make that happen? How are we going to police everybody? How are we going to have to see vaccination cards? It would be physically impossible for the amount of crowd that we get. I wouldn’t be able to hire enough people to do the job.”
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Domenick Crimi, the former president of the United Merchants of the South Ninth Street Business Association and general manager of Cappuccio's Meats, says a smaller event is being planned.
“It’s very disappointing," Crimi said, "because we were all getting ramped up. We haven’t had a festival for two years in a row."
The event's cancellation will hurt many businesses which were hoping for a late-2021 boost, as many are still recovering from the economic effect of the pandemic.
“The fourth quarter is important to many of the businesses down here. So we were hoping that this was going to be a kick starter for the fourth quarter," said Anthony Anastasio, the owner of Anthony's Italian Coffee and Chocolate Shop, also located on South 9th Street.
"It’s disappointing with the new mandates, especially with the walking and the eating, that’s not allowed for us to be able to do that. We are a food destination here so, if you are not walking and eating, you aren’t experiencing what we have here on 9th Street."