For one night each October, a stretch of South Philadelphia that already has a reputation for drawing a crowd turns itself over to witches. The East Passyunk Witch Craft Crawl returns on Wednesday, Oct. 28, for its 17th year, running from 6 to 10 p.m. along East Passyunk Avenue and the side streets around it. More than 30 bars, restaurants and shops take part, each offering its own small piece of the evening: a themed cocktail, a discounted record player, a five-minute tarot reading, a temporary tattoo.
The premise is simple and slightly silly, which is much of the appeal. Buy a ticket, collect a stamp card and a witch hat or a light-up necklace at registration, then wander the avenue buying the specials that earn you stamps. Three or more stamps gets your card into a drawing for East Passyunk merchandise. Completed cards can be dropped at Latchkey Records at 1502 E. Passyunk Ave. or through the mail slot at the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District office at 1904 E. Passyunk Ave.
Registration runs from 4 to 7 p.m. at Mark Canale CrossCountry Mortgage, 1916 E. Passyunk Ave. The organizers are blunt about the deadline: arrive after 7 p.m. and the hats and necklaces will be gone, though a ticket still gets you into the crawl and the specials. The after-party starts at 9:30 p.m. at Pub on Passyunk East, known to everyone locally as P.O.P.E., at 1501 E. Passyunk Ave.
Tickets start at $6.66 for early-bird admission, a price that is plainly a joke about the number of the beast and has become something of a tradition for the event. Standard tickets are $10 and day-of tickets are $13, plus any applicable fees. Food, drinks and merchandise are paid for separately. The crawl is general admission, with no reserved seating and no fixed route, so the crowd disperses up and down the avenue as the evening goes on.
The specials lean hard into the theme. Cantina Los Caballitos is pouring spiced cider margaritas for $6.66. The Bottle Shop has an $8 Poison Apple cocktail. Juana Tamale is selling Bruja Burritos at $6.66. Milk Jawn, the neighborhood's small-batch ice cream shop, has a Witch's Brew boozy ice cream flavor. Among the shops, A Novel Idea offers five-minute tarot readings for $10 between 6 and 8 p.m., Eastern Pass Tattoo Co. does free Halloween-themed temporary tattoos alongside $100 flash tattoos, and Latchkey Records takes 20 percent off turntables and speakers. Hours vary by business, so some specials are available only for part of the night.
What makes the crawl more than a bar promotion is the street it happens on, and the long, deliberate effort that turned that street around. East Passyunk Avenue was for much of the twentieth century the commercial spine of an Italian American South Philadelphia, and by the 1990s it had the empty storefronts and frayed edges that came with suburban flight and the decline of neighborhood retail. The recovery was piecemeal and slow, driven by neighborhood groups and merchants rather than any single redevelopment scheme.
A useful marker of that turnaround sits at the corner of Tasker, 11th and Passyunk, where an island of concrete that once held a gas station and then a cheesesteak stand became the Singing Fountain. The land was acquired in 2000 by the predecessor of the Passyunk Avenue Revitalization Corporation, and the fountain itself opened in 2004, its cherubs, storks, mermaid and sound system meant to evoke an Italian piazza. The Philadelphia Inquirer credits the idea to then-councilman and future mayor Jim Kenney. In 2009, when the fountain needed maintenance money, the community threw a block party and raised the $4,000 required. In 2013, Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote that behind every neighborhood success story in Philadelphia there seems to be a rejuvenated park, and that in East Passyunk it was the Singing Fountain plaza.
Through the 2000s, neighborhood groups and businesses worked the corridor block by block, helping existing businesses, recruiting new ones into empty storefronts and investing in public space. The Witch Craft Crawl belongs to that same playbook, and its timing fits: by one count the event is now in its 17th year, which places its first edition in the late 2000s, as the avenue's revival was gathering speed. The East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District runs it explicitly to promote local businesses, and the structure of the night reflects that. Every ticket sold sends people through the doors of independent shops and restaurants, and the stamp card gives them a reason to keep moving rather than settle into one bar.
The event has grown into a fixture on the city's Halloween calendar, covered year after year by local outlets and copied in spirit by other neighborhoods. Its details shift from year to year. In earlier editions the after-party was held at the Insomnia Cookie Lab on Wharton Street, and the stamp threshold for the prize drawing has been as high as five. This year it is three stamps and P.O.P.E. at the end of the night. The constants are the price gimmick, the hats, and the sheer number of small businesses willing to invent a witch-themed special for a Wednesday.
That a crawl like this works at all depends on a street where people already want to walk. Sonny Leuzzi, who owns Stogie Joe's Tavern on the avenue, put it plainly to CBS Philadelphia: all the events on Passyunk are great, he said, calling it a great street up and down, from one end to the other. Sarah Cowell, an organizer, described the point of the night as getting people down to celebrate the Halloween season with bars, restaurants and shops, with lots of Halloween goodies and witchy things to help people feel in the season.
For anyone planning to go, the practical notes are worth repeating. Check in before 7 p.m. if you want the hat or necklace. Bring cash or a card for the specials, which are not included in the ticket. Expect some businesses to close their specials early. And if you arrive late, you can still crawl: show your ticket to the bartender. The full list of participating businesses and their specials is posted on the East Passyunk Avenue website, and tickets are sold through the event's official ticketing page.