Alive After Five dates announced

Despite the dates being approved by the Patchogue Village Board of Trustees earlier this week on Monday, Feb. 26, the future of the Alive After Five event, according to Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce executive director David Kennedy, remains unknown.

The following dates have been approved as Thursdays, June 27, July 11 and 25, and Aug. 8 with an available Aug. 15 rain date. This year’s sponsors will include Stony Brook University as a main sponsor, as well as The Retreat- Long Island Safer Bars Initiative.

As for the fate of the popular street festival, Kennedy explained, “We understand after 20 somewhat years, people are feeling Alive After Five ‘fatigue.’ However, the festival is a wonderful opportunity for people outside of the village to visit, and we have to be mindful of that. We created this brand, but we are not married to it and we need to refresh it.”

Looking forward beyond 2024, Kennedy’s idea of a possible refresh in the future might look like “Alive After Five 365”—celebrating what is happening daily without the need of the event itself.

“Alive After Five was created with the idea to bring a nightlife to Patchogue—and, well, guess what? Twenty years later, it has succeeded,” he said. “What we are planning is a rebranding.”

However, he also recognized essentially “pulling the plug” on the event all together might upset a lot of people who frequent it.

“We will continue to talk about it,” he said of the planning process.

In 2021, after the COVID-19 shutdown, holding the street fest seemed, at the time, unlikely, until the chamber introduced the open-air scaled-back dinning concept, which was held in lieu of the full-fledged Alive After Five.

However, according to village officials, in 2021, they didn’t want to see the on-street dining turn into a mass of people coming down to Main Street with the expectations of an event similar to Alive After Five. The event was still held with only dining and no beer pens, requiring patrons to make reservations. Also, masks and social distancing was adhered to.

Even prior to the pandemic, Kennedy said discussions arose suggesting a slim-down of the event. In 2021, he told the Long Island Advance, he hopes future public meetings could be held to see what the plan for the event series might or should look like in 2022.

In 2022, restaurant owners agreed to rework their beer pens and instead of individual pens, there were now four larger pens on each end of the festival, allowing for more family-oriented activities in between. Smoking was also be limited to those areas.

Then, in 2023, the village cut back the time of the festival by a half hour earlier at explicitly 9 p.m. rather than the usual 9:30 p.m., despite a possible 10 p.m. extension discussed in 2022.

At that time, village officials cited excessive drinking and unruly behavior as the major issue behind the decision. Also, village employees were forced to work too many hours, coming in early to start the day and not leaving until late at night to accommodate the festival.

“Alive After Five has been a very important part of the village’s personality over the last 22 to 23 years,” said mayor Paul Pontieri, reflecting on the success of the event. “But that being said, there are certain things that need to be done. It was getting somewhat out of control. We are working with the chamber, restaurant committee, BID, and most importantly, the Suffolk County Police Department. I think we will be able to come up with a solution for Alive After Five.”