Sunday afternoon, September 20, 2026. Harlem’s African American Day Parade is moving up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Café Yaeji is in its final hour, and Brooklyn’s Everyday People opens at 3 p.m. The city’s remaining culture route also includes Sulwhasoo and CJ Hendry’s immersive Secret Garden and Brooklyn Book Festival’s virtual opening day.
Now underway: Harlem’s African American Day Parade runs until 6 p.m.
The 57th annual African American Day Parade takes over Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard today. The Apollo’s pre-show begins at 11 a.m. at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, with 2024 Amateur Night winner Cruz Angel. The parade runs from 12:30 to 6 p.m. along Seventh Avenue from 111th to 136th Street.
The scale is substantial: more than 300 performances and 37 floats. The Apollo returns to the procession after nearly two decades, with DJ Slid3 on its float, and will receive the inaugural Community Institution Award. The parade’s theme, “Good Businesses Sustain Our Future,” puts Black enterprise beside culture and community as the day’s central public statement. Read the full parade preview.
Final hour: Café Yaeji closes at 3 p.m.
Oatly and Korean-American artist and producer Yaeji have turned 48 Ludlow Street into Café Yaeji, a two-day pop-up inspired by Korean dabangs, the tea and coffee houses that served as gathering places for generations of artists, writers and music lovers.
The free menu centers a gochujang latte made with espresso, Oatly Barista Edition, a gochujang-vanilla base, salted vanilla cold foam and gochugaru. The idea works because the drink is not detached from Yaeji’s creative identity. Music, product and a specific cultural reference meet in one neighborhood room.
Everyday People opens at 99 Scott from 3 to 10 p.m.
Everyday People returns to Brooklyn this afternoon at 99 Scott Avenue. The gathering runs from 3 to 10 p.m., extending Sunday’s Black cultural calendar from Harlem’s parade into East Williamsburg. Admission is ticketed through the organizer’s official event page.
The party’s place in the day is as important as its hours. A parade built around Black business, culture and community gives way to a dance floor created for the African diaspora, turning one Sunday into a cross-borough continuum rather than a set of unrelated listings.
Sulwhasoo and CJ Hendry’s Secret Garden closes at 6 p.m.
At The Brant Foundation, 421 East 6th Street, artist CJ Hendry and Korean beauty house Sulwhasoo have built Secret Garden, an immersive forest of flat-pack wooden sculpture inspired by the hidden garden at the House of Sulwhasoo in Seoul. Visitors can walk through the forms, draw and add color. Public hours run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today.
The installation turns a beauty campaign into a participatory art environment. Sulwhasoo frames the project around its 60 years of ginseng research, while Hendry makes time and handwork physical: a garden assembled piece by piece, then changed by the people moving through it.
Brooklyn Book Festival is live online until 5 p.m.
The Brooklyn Book Festival opens its 21st edition with Virtual Festival Day from noon to 5 p.m. today. Bookend events then spread across all five boroughs through September 28, followed by Children’s Day at Brooklyn Borough Hall on September 26 and the main Festival Day and Literary Marketplace on September 27.
The festival’s opening online format is a useful first door into a week built around access. The flagship day will bring authors, publishers and booksellers to eight indoor and outdoor stages around Downtown Brooklyn, but today’s virtual program begins the literary conversation without requiring a trip across the city.
Sources: The Apollo; African American Day Parade, Inc.; Everyday People; Brooklyn Book Festival; Artsy; Average Socialite. Event schedules can change; check the linked organizers before traveling.
