Grid Magazine

Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend!

FRIDAY, 6.5
Pride Month Hike: Come along with Trail Ambassadors Lisa Kleiman, Sheryl Rose, Jean McWilliams, and Jill Curatolo to celebrate Pride Month with a special early evening hike! Highlights of the route will include the Lavender Trail (of course!), the Thomas Mill Red Covered Bridge, and a stretch alongside the Wissahickon Creek. Along the way, we’ll talk about some movers and shakers from the Philly LGBTQ+ community.

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/pride-month-hike/

SATURDAY, 6.6
Philly Outdoor Gear Swap: Join us for a one day outdoor flea market to buy, sell, trade and give away gently used gear. This is a great chance for your equipment to find a new home or for you to find some affordable nature stuff to enhance your adventures!

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/philly-outdoor-gear-swap/

SATURDAY, 6.6
West Philadelphia Unity Fest: Join us as we celebrate 5 years of building a stronger community together at the West Philadelphia Unity Fest! It’s a day filled with music, activities, and community fun.

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/west-philadelphia-unity-fest/

When a crowd comprised of more than 60 renters, homeowners, organizers and representatives gathered on May 7 in Southwest Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, they had one message: “The renters united will never be defeated.”

Led by One PA, a statewide community organizing group, the rally was the latest move in the ongoing effort to secure 925 affordable rental units managed by Neighborhood Restorations, a private developer. The units, spread across West and Southwest Philadelphia, were cast into the spotlight last July when Neighborhood Restorations released a letter announcing its intentions to sell the properties as a single portfolio in the near future.

Such a sale could result in major displacement for the approximately 3,000 people who call Neighborhood Restorations properties home, according to Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents Philadelphia’s Third District, where most of the units are located.

“These are long-term tenants that are very rooted in their communities,” says Gauthier. “This is about people who have been contributors to their blocks, to their communities, asking their city, asking their government to help them from being displaced and having their lives shattered.”

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/06/01/southwest-philly-residents-rally-to-save-affordable-housing/

✍️ Sophie Aanerud
📸 Tracie Van Auken

🎟️ TICKET GIVEAWAY 🎟️

River Roads Music Festival returns to Heuser Park in King of Prussia on Saturday, June 27 and we want you to be a part of the experience! Here’s your chance to win 2 tickets to the fest:

HOW TO ENTER
• Visit store.gridphilly.com
• Subscribe to Grid by June 10

It's that easy! Good luck and may you enjoy your music-themed outdoor festivities this summer season 🎶

Here’s a recipe for a lovely summer day: Pack a little picnic, grab your best floppy hat or Phillies cap, slather on some sunscreen and take a mini road trip to a nearby farm to go fruit picking. This fun outdoor activity is a life-affirming blend of frolicking in a field and getting access to the freshest local fruit available — sun-ripened and honey-sweet, practically unrecognizable compared to what comes from a conventional supermarket. It’s also a great way to teach kids (and maybe even remind yourself) about the remarkable amount of labor that goes into harvesting crops by hand.

There are a number of U-pick, or pick-your-own (PYO), farms within an hour or so of Philadelphia, and visiting them is a compelling way to get acquainted with growers in the area. To make a day of it, see if the farm has a produce stand or market with an events calendar, and stop in to see what’s going on — many farms host classes and workshops.

Between increasingly-extreme weather events, skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer prices, and labor complications due to immigration policies, farms of all sizes are feeling immense pressure and uncertainty and need our support now more than ever.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/06/01/nine-regional-farms-where-you-can-pick-your-own-produce-this-summer/

✍️ Emily Kovach
📸 Photo courtesy of Linvilla Orchards

Happy June! Another issue of Grid has arrived 🗞️ Here are a just few of the stories you’ll find in this month’s issue:

• Nine regional farms where you can pick your own produce this summer

• Southwest Philly residents rally to save affordable housing

• Thousands of radio receivers track birds as they migrate across North and Central America

➡️ Read the new issue now at gridphilly.com

Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend!

SATURDAY, 5.30
Ray’s Reusables Composting Program Launch: Ray’s Reusables — a sustainable household goods store offering refillable cleaning and body care products in Northern Liberties— will launch a new public compost drop-off program in partnership with Bennett Compost. With the addition of this partnership, Ray’s Reusables will evolve beyond just sustainable retail into an all-in-one eco-hub.

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/rays-reusables-composting-program-launch/

SATURDAY, 5.30
Join Friends of the Wissahickon, The Free Library of Philadelphia, and Friends of Vernon Park for a beginner’s birding stroll through Vernon Park—no experience or equipment needed. We’ll meet at the Joseph E. Coleman Library to go over some basics, then make our way over to the park to see which backyard birds have made their home in this urban green space.

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/beginner-birding-with-the-free-library-of-philadelphia/

SATURDAY, 5.30
Project Rummage Runway Fashion Show: Crossroads Women’s Center will be hosting a slow-fashion event where local designers and models will come together to showcase upcycled and sustainable designs from our Community Rummage. The competition will celebrate sustainable and slow fashion principles, showcase community talent, and show that saving the planet doesn’t require more money or new resources—just creativity.

➡️ Learn More: https://gridphilly.com/event/project-rummage-runway-fashion-show/

Who could have guessed 22 years ago when Facebook launched or 19 years ago when the first iPhone was unveiled the profound effects on our culture. The technology’s promise that, with regular updates, we could stay connected to our grade school classmates, a former neighbor, a cousin who lives thousands of miles away. Not only that, we could find communities based on our passions, regardless of where we lived.

To some degree that has been true, but the technology has also been blamed for political divisiveness and insurrection, children’s suicides and a flood of misinformation that threatens to undermine our public health — just to name a few.

Now here comes artificial intelligence, another technology reshuffling how we approach life and work. I think it’s fair to say this revolution is being met with more apprehension than the last one. New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner recently wrote that AI is “here to either a) help with our homework, or b) end the world.”

The techno-optimists appear to be currently outnumbered by the techno-skeptical and techno-exhausted, but each of them has a vision of how things will unfold. But, alas, what the future holds is unknown.

➡️ Read the full note from our publisher at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/05/01/publishers-notes-into-the-unknown/

✍️ Alex Mulcahy

On April 13, the day Mayor Cherelle Parker declared Vegan Cheesesteak Day, the American Vegan Center, headquartered in Old City, held its annual vegan cheesesteak contest, but with a record-breaking challenge: create the longest vegan cheesesteak, totaling 76 inches as a tribute to the revolutionary year of 1776.

Vegetarianism and Philadelphia may seem like odd bedfellows, but they are intertwined, says Vance Lehmkuhl, director of the American Vegan Center. According to his latest book, “Revolutionary Peace: How Philadelphia Launched the U.S. Vegetarian and Vegan Movement,” vegetarianism is as old as the nation.

Bernard Unti, a native Philadelphian and historian of animal protection, concurs.

“Vegetarianism in Philadelphia predates the cheesesteak by at least a century and a half,” Unti says.

Lehmkuhl explains, “The cheesesteak has two significant parts, and neither is vegan. It seems like [a vegan cheesesteak] contradicts itself.” But it fits into the framework of Philadelphia as a hotbed for revolutionary, abolitionist and vegetarian activity throughout its history.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/05/01/american-vegan-center-celebrates-semiquincentennial-with-76-inch-plant-based-cheesesteak/

✍️ Patrick Kerr
📸 Tracie Van Auken

One night in July 2016, Jean-Pierre Lokombe woke up to a group of armed men banging on the door of his home in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The men were part of the Allied Democratic Force, one of the deadliest of the more than 100 rebel groups that r**e, kill and maim to control the Congo’s rich resources. Threatened with death, Lokombe, a nurse, then 40, his wife and five children, and their fellow villagers scrambled to flee their land, leaving it to be mined for minerals. The Lokombes, whose names have been changed for their safety, began a grueling journey that ended in Philadelphia.

Nine years would pass before the Lokombes would meet Kennedy Chesoli, founder and executive director of the Center for Integration and Migrant Support (CIMS), a West Philly nonprofit that assists newly arrived immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa resettle in Greater Philadelphia.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/05/01/west-philly-nonprofit-helps-african-immigrants-settle-in-the-city/

✍️ Constance Garcia-Barrio
📸 Tracie Van Auken