Crawl around the neighborhood with fellow York-ites for an evening of yard fun.
The York Yard Crawl will be held July 29 from 4 to 8 p.m. The event will feature a neighborhood-wide art walk, yard sale, music festival and garden party.
York residents can host an art gallery, dance party, craft lesson, fortune telling, yard sale or nearly anything they want in their front yard. Creativity is encouraged.
This year, there will be a homebrew demonstration, a kids’ obstacle course on Ellis Street and much more.
Everyone who registers before July 1 will be added to a map. Printed maps will be available July 24 at Nelson’s Market. The map will be posted and residents can register their “yard thing” on the York Crawl’s website.
June Hathaway, the organizer of the crawl, moved to the York neighborhood in 2012. Previously, Hathaway had been living in the Sunnyland neighborhood and loved the Sunnyland Stomp, a similar event.
Hathaway would love to see an event like this in every neighborhood in Bellingham.
The First York Crawl was in 2018, and after a break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it started back up in the summer of 2022.
Tristan Rilea has been at Nelson’s Market for over five years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the York Crawl was big. It mainly consisted of yard sales, York residents meeting each other and checking out residents' gardens, Rilea said.
Hathaway is also working with the York Neighborhood Association's historic preservation committee to include neighborhood historical sites on the crawl map this year.
“York is a great neighborhood to explore this way because it is a microcosm of Bellingham in one neighborhood, with students, families, artists and retired folks calling it home,” Hathaway said in an email.
Ben Delaney (he/him) is a city life reporter for The Front. He is a junior majoring in environmental studies journalism. In his free time, he enjoys skiing at Mt Baker, fishing on local rivers, and just spending time outdoors. You can reach him at delaney.thefront@gmail.com.
