If you've lived in Longmont long enough to know that Main Street closing to cars means something is about to happen downtown, you've probably assumed it's always the same something. It isn't. This September, the city closed five blocks of Main Street for ArtWalk, while a separate brewery fundraiser took place elsewhere in Longmont. Looking at how the events fit into Longmont's fall calendar tells you more than any list of "things to do" ever could.
The short version: one event is a nonprofit arts center's biggest annual showcase. The other is a brewery's biggest annual fundraiser, and it doesn't even happen on Main Street. Between them sits a restaurant preview event, a tattoo festival, and a Day of the Dead celebration already on the books for October. The events are run by different organizations and fall within the same six weeks, a pattern worth understanding if you want to know what downtown actually feels like right now, not what a tourism brochure says it feels like.
The Saturday Main Street Belonged to Firehouse
ArtWalk on Main returned Saturday, September 12, from 4 to 8 p.m., and it was the reason Main Street was closed to vehicle traffic from 3rd Avenue to Longs Peak Avenue for the afternoon. This was not a small pop-up. The event ran six separate performance stages along those five blocks, and organizers had expected more than 175 vendor booths selling everything from jewelry to ceramics. Kids got their own Children's Art Market. Sidewalk artists, some of them teenagers, competed in a chalk-art event called Chalkmont, and at 7:45 p.m. the Firehouse Art Center's exhibits committee named a Best in Show winner in both adult and youth categories, each taking home a $100 gift card.
ArtWalk was presented by the Firehouse Art Center, the same nonprofit that runs the gallery space downtown year round, and it functioned as the opening night of something bigger: Longmont Arts Week, which ran September 12 through 19. The week wasn't just ArtWalk stretched out. It included TasteAbout Downtown on September 13, a preview event for the city's Longmont Restaurant Week, and closed out on September 19 with an event called Downtown Ink. If you wondered why downtown galleries stayed open later and Old Town Marketplace had been hosting extra artist demonstrations, this was why. The Callahan House, the city's historic home downtown, also hosted live painting sessions during the week, which is a detail that tells you something about how far this reached. It wasn't confined to the commercial strip. It pulled in a municipal historic building too.
The Weekend That Belonged to Left Hand
Two weeks later, on Friday, September 25, and Saturday, September 26, Left Hand Brewing ran its Oktoberfest at The Garden, the brewery's outdoor venue at 1245 Boston Avenue. This one didn't touch Main Street at all. It was also a fundraiser for a brewery-run charitable foundation.
Here's what the weekend actually looked like on the ground:
- Friday, September 25, doors opened at 4 p.m. for a kickoff pre-party featuring live bluegrass and the tapping of a special Oktoberfest firkin. Tickets were $10, kids 12 and under free.
- Saturday, September 26, an all-day traditional Oktoberfest featured live music, stein holding, brat eating, and a costume contest. A craft artisan market with more than 30 vendors ran alongside bounce houses and kids' activities. Tickets were $5, kids free.
- Parking in the dirt lot across from the brewery ran $5, and that money also went to the foundation.
Left Hand has run some version of this event since 2012, which makes it one of the older recurring fundraisers in town, and every dollar from tickets, merchandise, and parking supports the Left Hand Brewing Foundation, the brewery's charitable arm. The Garden itself does more than host Oktoberfest. It's also where the Twin Peaks Rotary Club holds its annual Chile Roast Fest, which means this single outdoor space has become a kind of shared civic backyard for more than one Longmont nonprofit, not just Left Hand's own programming.
Same Six Weeks, Different Institutions
ArtWalk is presented by the Firehouse Art Center, which runs the gallery space downtown. Left Hand Brewing's Oktoberfest supports the Left Hand Brewing Foundation, the brewery's charitable arm. The two events took place within two weeks of each other.
That's a useful thing to know if you live here: the fall calendar brings two different fundraising events into the same six-week stretch.
What's Already on the Books for October
The pattern doesn't stop when September ends. The City of Longmont has already listed a Day of the Dead Family Celebration for Saturday, October 24, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Longmont Museum on Quail Road. It's a different institution again, this time a city department rather than a nonprofit, running a different kind of event entirely, a family program rather than a fundraiser or an art showcase.
Stack all three side by side and a shape starts to emerge. A nonprofit arts center in mid-September. A brewery foundation in late September. A city museum in late October. Three organizations and three different kinds of events fall within the same six-week window.
If you're new enough to Longmont that this is the first fall you've watched the calendar fill in like this, it's worth knowing it isn't a one-time thing. ArtWalk has run for years as Firehouse's signature event. Left Hand's Oktoberfest predates most of the businesses currently open on Main Street. The rhythm repeats, and once you've seen it once, the next September stops looking like a surprise and starts looking like a schedule you already know.
What This Actually Says About Living Here
None of this is really about events. It's about what it means that a town this size supports a Main Street closure, a brewery event, and a museum program inside of six weeks, all funded and staffed by organizations that exist independently of each other. It's a sign of how many separate institutions downtown Longmont is currently able to sustain at once, from a gallery-based arts nonprofit to a brewery's charitable foundation to a city museum with its own programming calendar. A downtown that can only support one big annual event usually only has one. This one has at least three, run by three different kinds of organizations, and that says something about the density of civic life here that a single Saturday afternoon at ArtWalk won't tell you on its own.
If you're weighing what it actually feels like to live near a downtown like this, year round rather than just during one festival weekend, that's the kind of texture worth asking about before you commit to a neighborhood. Flatirons Brokerage spends a lot of time in Longmont and the towns around it, and we're always glad to talk through what a specific block or building actually feels like on an ordinary Tuesday, not just during ArtWalk. Let's Connect.
