summer in the city

During Pride Weekend, brunch goes way beyond just eggs and mimosas. It is the warmup, it’s the outfit check. It’s the first round and the place where your group gets organized.

And this weekend, Philadelphia has plenty of great options to start the celebration before the march, festival, parties, and nighttime plans take over all your extra brain space.

Pride Weekend in Philadelphia never really stays in one lane, which is always the best part. It starts as a march, segues into a festival, spills into the bars, pulls drag performers onto stages, fills sidewalks with glitter, flags, music, friends, strangers, and consistently becomes one of the loudest, warmest, most alive weekends of the summer.

This year's Pride Weekend is shaping up to be one of the biggest in recent memory, with events stretching from the Delaware Waterfront to the Parkway and everywhere in between. 

Philadelphia has never struggled to find places to drink. Or places to eat. Or places to stay out later than originally intended. But what Philly has struggled with is finding places that blend all of those things together in a way that feels easy.

For anyone unfamiliar, Porchfest is a community driven live music festival where local musicians and bands perform on front porches, stoops, patios, and sidewalks throughout West  Philadelphia. Instead of everyone gathering around one giant stage, the music is spread across residential streets, creating a moving festival atmosphere that encourages people to walk around and explore.

There was a time when cocktails were not trying to be mysterious. People were out here ordering Melon Balls like they had stock in melon liqueur. French Martinis made everybody feel impossibly sophisticated, and bars served shots with names nobody questioned. Then somewhere along the way, cocktails got… serious. Bartenders started describing cocktails using words like washed, clarified, and expressive.

But what do you think, we kind of secretly miss having fun, don’t we? 

Certain weekends in Philadelphia feel very straightforward, meaning you go out, end up at the same bar you always end up at, hear the same playlist you heard last Saturday, and eventually Uber home wondering why your night somehow looked exactly like your last three nights. This weekend does not feel like that.

This weekend feels like our nightlife split into five different personalities and told everybody to pick their fighter.

You could spend Saturday night slowly swaying to reggae and soul in an intimate listening bar. Or screaming 2000s lyrics at a Pre-Pride dance party. Or spiraling emotionally at Drake Night with a vodka soda in your hand.

There are two types of Philadelphian weekend plans. The first kind is where you tell yourself you’re going to be productive, run errands, maybe grab one coffee, and keep it calm.

And then there’s Coffee Rave.

Every Philadelphia summer eventually turns into a waterfront summer.

The very second the weather breaks, people start migrating east like they’re being summoned. The Delaware River stretch has become one of the easiest places in the city to build an entire night around without the need to travel. You can bounce between beer gardens, giant decks, cocktail spots, outdoor hangouts, and bars to your heart’s content.If you’re anything like the masses, suddenly everyone wants a frozen drink outside with a view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a dark room pretending it’s still January.

For a while, everything leaned heavily toward rooftop bars, bright cocktail lounges, and places that felt designed more for daylight than actual late nights. But Bastet, the newly opened nightclub on 6th and Spring Garden, feels like a hard pivot back toward something moodier.

Darker rooms, heavy atmosphere, music-centered vibe. You know, a little of everything Philadelphia’s been missing.

Cinco Express is not a very laissez-faire situation.

Well… it is.

But if you don’t have at least a loose game plan, you’re going to blink and realize you’ve been at the same bar for three hours while the rest of Philadelphia is already on round six somewhere else.

The goal is to ride the wave without getting stuck too early, and here’s how to actually do that.