Last Sunday, October 25, neighbors across Mar Vista opened their front porches to local musicians for Porchfest LA, a free, community-organized music festival that has become increasingly popular in cities across the country. Mar Vista Voice partnered with longtime organizer Helen Sklar to host one of the neighborhood’s participating porches, featuring seven musical acts over six hours. Neighbors gathered throughout the afternoon to enjoy live music and spend time together. It was a beautiful day for our community and a reminder of how special it is to have free, accessible events that bring neighbors together in real life.
The concept behind Porchfest is simple. Residents volunteer their porches and other outdoor spaces for local musicians to perform. The concerts are free, and audiences can move between participating homes throughout the day. There are no tickets or traditional concert venues, and the events are generally organized by residents and volunteers. Porchfest gives local musicians an opportunity to perform for new audiences while encouraging neighbors to explore their communities and get to know each other.
The Porchfest movement began in Ithaca, New York, in 2007, with just 20 bands performing on neighborhood porches. Since then, the concept has spread to cities across the United States and Canada, with some communities turning Porchfest into a major annual affair. Ithaca’s 2026 festival featured 174 performers across 109 porches, nearly two decades after the first event.
One of the largest Porchfest celebrations takes place in Somerville, Massachusetts, where the event has become a major tradition. More than 500 bands signed up for Somerville’s 2026 Porchfest, which was expected to attract tens of thousands of attendees. The festival has grown so large that performances are organized into geographic zones, with different neighborhoods hosting concerts at different times to help manage the crowds. Despite its size, the event remains free and centered on performances hosted by locals.
In Napa, organizers close residential streets to cars during Porchfest so people can walk and bike between performances. Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C., also host popular Porchfest events. While the scale and logistics of these events are different in each location, the basic idea remains the same. Local musicians perform in neighborhood spaces, and everyone is welcome.
Los Angeles held its first Porchfest in 2024, thanks to Hélène Udy, who helped bring the concept to the city. As LAist reported, Udy wanted to create more opportunities for neighbors to connect through music. With help from Rob Kadota of the Mar Vista Music Project, Porchfest expanded to Mar Vista and Culver City in 2025. This year’s event marked Porchfest LA’s third year. We’re so grateful to Hélène and Rob for bringing this wonderful event to our city and helping it grow on the Westside!
Porchfest is a welcome addition to LA, where car-centric planning limits opportunities for us to gather and connect. Many of us don’t know the people living just a few doors away, and enjoying live music can come with a hefty price tag. In a city where driving is the default, walking from porch to porch to enjoy free concerts is a departure from the norm, but that’s part of what makes Porchfest so special. It shows what’s possible when we make more room for community life.
This year’s event brought performances to porches across Mar Vista. At Helen Sklar’s home, Mar Vista Voice helped organize an afternoon of music featuring seven acts, including Theo Rasmussen, Rockshay, Jenna Isn’t Famous, Sara Bunge, Auto Flow, Captain Danger, and The Other Adam Smith. We were especially grateful to the musicians who donated their time and talents, the volunteers who helped make the event possible, and Helen for generously opening her home to the community.
Mar Vista Voice spends much of its time organizing around issues affecting our neighborhoods, including housing, homelessness, public safety, and local government accountability. But we also believe that building a strong community means creating space for people to come together outside of meetings, teach-ins and political events. Porchfest is a great example of this type of space, and we’d love to see it grow here in Mar Vista and across the city.