The Feast of San Gennaro returns to Little Italy

The Feast of San Gennaro is back for its 97th year and hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on Mulberry Street to celebrate a slice of Italian-American culture.

While most attendees know the street festival for its traditional Neapolitan sausages, zeppoles and the Ferris wheel that takes riders right up to a fourth-floor apartment, the event is more of a homecoming for others.

John Fratta, a spry fourth-generation Little Italy resident with salt-and-pepper hair and eyeglasses, is one of the feast's organizers.

On a recent Tuesday, he was building a booth for the festival. Fratta explained that his great-grandfather was the first president of the feast, which started as a one-day block party in 1926.

As Italian immigrants settled across the Lower East Side, the Neapolitans concentrated on Mulberry Street and brought along their tradition of commemorating the martyr San Gennaro of Naples.

These days, only 8% of Little Italy’s residents are of Italian ancestry according to one 2019 report, as rising rents have forced residents and businesses to other boroughs over the years.

Fratta has seen many of his childhood friends move out over the decades he's lived in the neighborhood. Today they are scattered across New York and New Jersey.

“A one-bedroom was going for $3,500 a month,” said Fratta. “Shoot me first.”

For Fratta and many others, the Feast of San Gennaro is a homecoming during its 11 day-run and even in the days leading up to it. Many of the vendors and attendees grew up in Little Italy and have since moved across the tristate area.

“It’s a family reunion,” says Fratta.

As vendors — including local restaurants — started building out their structures on Tuesday afternoon, longtime resident Vinny Gione, a.k.a. “Skinny Vinny,” bumped into a childhood friend, Eugene Leong, known as “Crazy Eugene,” from Chinatown, on the other side of Canal Street.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” said Gione, who has been working the festival since childhood, back “when you could get three zeppoles for a dime.”

His old pal Leong, who had a white stubble moustache and beard and wore a brown cap with the words “Marines Veteran,” was there to check out the festival’s setup.

At 16, Gione had a stand where customers would throw a nickel onto a platter. He’s since cooked pizza and sausage braciole — “But that’s really hard. It’s a young man’s game” — and this year, he’s selling piña coladas with help from his kids.

“See, I’m sitting down,” he said from his fold-out chair on a stoop. “I’m too old.”

He’s not the only one keeping tradition alive. After her godfather retired from the bakery in 2020, Elizabeth Grazioso – who’d previously worked at the Department of Housing – took over the La Bella Ferrara bakery, which has roots going back to the late 1800s.

“I had a whole career with DOH — at the top of the game — but “I couldn’t see this bakery closing,” Grazioso says. She’s been going there since she was 14.

During the feast, Grazioso will manage the bakery’s stand, selling its original three cannolis — classic, chocolate dip, chocolate ricotta — along with modern flavors like peanut butter and red velvet.

Down Mulberry Street, Lucy Spata, who runs Lucy’s Sausages, echoed the bittersweet sentiment. She wore all black and was draped in heavy gold jewelry, including hoop earrings, thick chains bearing heart and cross pendants, as well as bracelets, an anklet and a smattering of rings.

At 6 years old, Spata helped her grandmother — the original “Lucy” — run the sausage stand at the festival. In 1972, she took over and expanded the menu with meatballs, rice balls, steaks and shish kebabs. Now, she lives in Brooklyn and is excited about the 11 days when vestiges of her childhood can come back.

“Times change,” she says. “The city just moves, keeps going. But the feast is still around. I see all my old friends, all my customers that come back here. It's just a wonderful feeling.”

The Feast of San Gennaro runs through Sept. 24 on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Booths are open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Admission is free; food and rides cost extra.