September is the month New York stops pretending it is on holiday. The tennis reaches its second week, the carnival takes over Eastern Parkway, Little Italy runs a street feast that is a hundred years old this year, and one Sunday near the end carries three separate events large enough to close streets. Some of it is expensive and most of it is free, and the two categories are not the ones people assume. This is the lineup, in the order it arrives, with what each one actually costs to attend.
A month this dense is really a routing problem: two of these events are on the same afternoon in the same borough, and the good version of the day depends on which one you start with. Tell Karpo what you actually want out of a Saturday and it can sort the calendar into an order that works from where you live.
Labour Day weekend: the carnival, and the thing before it
The West Indian American Day Carnival parade runs on Monday 7 September along Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, the culmination of a weekend that starts the Thursday before with junior carnival and the steel-band panorama competition. It is free, it is one of the largest street events in North America, and the crowd is measured in the millions rather than the thousands. Two practical notes: the associated pre-dawn celebration that precedes the parade is a genuinely different event with a genuinely different crowd, and the parade itself starts far earlier in the day than most first-timers expect. Take the subway, accept that several stations near the route will be exit-only, and eat from the roadside — the food is half the point.
The tennis: the finals are the 12th and 13th
The US Open runs to 13 September at Flushing Meadows, with the women's singles final on Saturday 12 September and the men's on Sunday 13 September. Those two sessions are the most expensive tickets in the city this month, and they are also the least interesting value: one match, one court, and a stadium so large that the upper tiers watch the screen. The better buy in the closing week is a day session on a grounds pass where the outer courts still carry doubles, juniors and wheelchair draws — several matches running at once, a few meters from the fence, for a fraction of the finals price. If you are going for the occasion, buy the final. If you are going for the tennis, buy the day before.
San Gennaro turns 100, and runs eleven days
The Feast of San Gennaro takes over eleven blocks of Little Italy from 17 to 27 September, and this year is its hundredth. Entry is free; the money goes on food, and the crowd on the middle weekend is the heaviest of the run. The locals' version is a weekday evening in the first half, when you can actually stand at a stall and talk to the person cooking. If you go at the weekend, come in from the Bowery side rather than Canal, and go early — by nine the street moves at a shuffle and the queues at the best-known stands are twenty minutes deep.
The 27th is a three-way collision
Sunday 27 September carries the closing day of San Gennaro, the Brooklyn Book Festival's main Festival Day, and the 51st Atlantic Antic, which shuts Atlantic Avenue from noon to 6pm. All three are free. All three are good. You cannot do all three properly, and the Brooklyn pair are close enough together that the sensible plan is to pick that borough and skip Manhattan entirely — the book festival in the morning, when the panels you actually want still have seats, then Atlantic Avenue in the afternoon once the street has filled. Note that the book festival's children's day is the Saturday, 26 September, which is the better of the two days if you are bringing anyone under twelve.
Climate Week, and why midtown gets difficult
Climate Week NYC runs 20 to 27 September, with the opening ceremony on Monday 21 September and its main hub program on the 21st and 22nd. Most of it is a professional conference rather than a public event, but it matters to everyone else for two reasons: midtown hotel rates spike for that week, and traffic in the east forties becomes genuinely unusable at certain hours. If you are visiting for anything else in that stretch, book the room early and plan on the subway.
What to buy and what to just turn up to
Only one thing on this list requires a ticket, and it is the tennis. The carnival, the feast, the book festival and the street fair are all free at the point of entry, which reverses the usual assumption that the big-name event is the one worth paying for. Spend the ticket budget on a single grounds-pass day in Queens, then spend the rest of the month walking into things. If you do buy resale for the finals, compare the all-in total across sellers rather than the headline price, because the number you see first and the number you pay are rarely the same one.
The short version of the month
Monday the 7th, Eastern Parkway, free, enormous. The 12th and 13th, the finals in Queens, expensive, or the day before for a tenth of it. The 17th through the 27th, Little Italy, free, best on a weeknight. The 26th and 27th, Brooklyn, free, and worth clearing the whole Sunday for. Between those four blocks you have a month that costs one ticket and a lot of subway rides — which is roughly the correct ratio for a September in this city.
Tags: #nycevents #septemberinnyc #usopen #westindianday #sangennaro #atlanticantic #brooklynbookfestival #climateweek #littleitaly #crownheights #flushingmeadows #nycthismonth #newyorkcity
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Ask Karpo first
A New York September stacks a grand slam, two parades, a street feast and a book festival into four weekends, and the listings sites will happily sell you a ticket to the one that was free. Ask Karpo which of them is worth your Saturday and it can weigh the travel, the crowd and the cost before you commit.
