18th Avenue Feast Is Cancelled After 30+ Years

It’s on. It’s off. It’s on again. It’s off. Really, this time it’s actually off. And possibly for good.

The 18th Avenue Feast – a.k.a. Feast of Santa Rosalia – has been cancelled, organizers told our sister site, the Bensonhurst Bean.

“There isn’t gonna be a Feast,” Joe LaMotta, one of the festival organizers, told Bensonhurst Bean. “The Festa di Santa Rosalia is cancelled.”

“Everyone thinks it’s on based on what was reported [by Courier-Life and Brooklyn Paper], but that was very inaccurate,” said a staffer for a local politician who requested to remain anonymous. “It’s definitely not on as of right now.”

According to the Bensonhurst Bean’s report, delays in obtaining permits, changing demographics and even lasting effects from a massive FBI mafia bust earlier this year are among the many reasons that organizers have been unable to pull it together.

Organizer Joe DeMarco, though, is asking residents to be at peace with the decision, and instead help them plan for a new event next year – which could be hampered by the city’s tough permit-approval process.

Meanwhile, we’re wondering what it must feel like over at the Brooklyn Paper, who gloated earlier this week on Twitter when they claimed the event would be 10 days, rather than one as the Bean previously reported.

“Brooklyn Daily [the new website for Bay News and other Courier papers] gets the story right (unlike #sheepsheadbites): 18th Ave. fest to go off without a hitch,” they said via the Brooklyn Paper’s Twitter account.

Another day, another story that needs to be corrected at the News Corp.-owned publication…