Chomp & Stomp Returns While Cabbagetown's New Amphitheatre Is Still Going Up

"We left behind our mountain homes, there to return no more / but we brought with us the way of life that we had known before."

Joyce Brookshire wrote those lines in "The Cabbagetown Ballad" in 1977, as the neighborhood's amphitheatre fundraising page records. Nearly fifty years later, her neighborhood is building her a stage in Cabbagetown Park. When Chomp & Stomp fills the same streets on Saturday, Nov. 7, that stage will still be a job site. The project's own schedule has carpentry running through Nov. 13 and closeout set for late November or early December.

The festival has been a volunteer-run fundraiser since local neighbors started it in 2003. This year it raises money for a neighborhood that is partway through paying for its most ambitious park project in years.

A stage that was meant to open before the festival

Brookshire, who lived from 1942 to 2017, was a singer-songwriter from Cabbagetown whose songs dealt with human rights, equality and justice. CBS News Atlanta reported that she was born and raised in the neighborhood and was often called "the voice of the neighborhood," with folk ballads that told stories of the area's history.

The amphitheatre named for her started with a $150,000 grant from Park Pride in February 2024. The grant covers a raised stage, a ramp and accessible seating, electrical upgrades, and drainage and erosion work. The Cabbagetown Initiative Community Development Corporation, the neighborhood nonprofit, was expected to raise a significant share of the budget on its own. Park Pride's 2024 grant list lists the Cabbagetown Park project among 37 parks across Atlanta and DeKalb County. Neighbors held winter concerts and karaoke nights to raise their share of the match, and the neighborhood credits Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari with facilitating the Park Pride grant. By the time CBS ran its story, more than $200,000 had been raised, including some grant money.

Jennifer Martin and Carly Rickles of Martin-Rickles Studio led the design. The concept page once said construction was scheduled for July 2025. The groundbreaking actually took place on June 9, 2026, at 6 p.m. in Cabbagetown Park. The neighborhood's construction Q&A set a goal of finishing before Chomp & Stomp in early November. The baseline schedule would have done that, with closeout set for Oct. 26 through Nov. 6, the day before the festival.

Where the site stood going into the final weeks

The Cabbagetown Initiative publishes a weekly construction log on its Brookshire Amphitheatre neighbor page. The entry for the week of Oct. 5 covers most of the work still ahead.

The closeout window is now about four weeks behind the original baseline. The log also put the Oct. 12 steel start at risk, because Mill & Forge's revised shop drawings, which added flitch plates to the roof structure, were still in structural review with SHEAR. Masonry, carpentry, electrical and landscaping all follow the steel, so the log said the completion window could move again if fabrication was not released soon.

Other parts of the build are on site already. Six pallets of granite, about 288 square feet, arrived on Oct. 1, and the contractor, Latitude, re-shot the elevations on the large horseshoe footing and the bridge. Landscape plugs from North Creek Nurseries were set to ship the week of Oct. 19, with a second order placed with Izel Plants. These are projections from one week's log. Anyone checking progress should look for the newest entry on the neighbor page, since dates have already moved once.

What a neighborhood-built park costs after the grant

The weekly log shows the kind of cost a grant total doesn't capture. The repriced planting plan came in over budget, and the owner approved the landscape budget with the sedge included at $4,658 above the original figure. A separate decision was pending on additional structural steel at a ballpark of about $8,000, plus any charge for the extra shop-drawing time.

Overruns like these are covered by neighborhood fundraising, and the Cabbagetown Initiative pays for its work through Chomp & Stomp. The festival says participation directly supports Cabbagetown's public greenspace, its community center and its outdoor mural walk. The organization is a 501(c)(3) built around free public gatherings: no-cost entertainment, recreation, arts and cultural programs. The festival's music page says chili spoon sales are what have "kept Cabbagetown programming, including Chomp & Stomp, running every year for the past couple decades." The 2026 festival materials don't earmark spoon money for the amphitheatre. Money raised specifically for the stage goes through the Joyce Brookshire Memorial Amphitheatre page, which takes direct donations and sells a signed, numbered screen print by Robert Lee of Methane Studios in Avondale. Proceeds from the print go to the amphitheatre.

Festival day, around a work site

The festival dates its roots to Cabbagetown's old-time string music. The music page credits Fiddlin' John Carson, Moonshine Kate and Brookshire herself as the inspiration. Here is how Saturday, Nov. 7 is laid out:

• Romp 5K: Starts at 8 a.m. at Milltown Tavern on a fast, flat 3.1-mile course through historic Cabbagetown. The race listing set registration at $40, rising to $45 starting Oct. 20 if the race has not sold out, and there is no race-day registration.
• Gates: The homepage lists 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and the FAQ lists 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Music generally ends around 7 p.m., with after-party programming on Carroll Street and at 97 Estoria.
• Chili: Cooks can't serve until the airhorn at 12:30 p.m. The homepage promises more than 100 chilis, and the cook-off page lists 50-plus individual teams and 15-plus restaurants.
• Spoons: Entry is free, but you need an official spoon to taste chili. Presale spots are Little's Food Store on Carroll Street, Sweet Cheats on Kirkwood Avenue, Mikkelson's Market on Flat Shoals in Reynoldstown and Emerald City Bagels on the Eastside BeltLine.
• Music: More than 30 bands play across the stages, including Front Porch, The Pink Stones, Peach Ice Cream Bluegrass, Podunk Ramblers and Frank Hamilton School Porch Jams. Bands start at 11 a.m. on the big Cabbagetown Park stage. Other stages include Esther Peachy Lefever Park, 97 Estoria, Carroll Street hosted by Skeletons Lot, and a new porch stage at Powell and Kirkwood. The festival still lists the Joyce Brookshire Amphitheatre among its stages, but carpentry there is scheduled through Nov. 13, so check the interactive schedule before you go.
• Artist Market: 74 artists and vendors across four streets.
• Getting there: Parking in Cabbagetown is scarce even without a festival. Organizers suggest transit, the BeltLine, bikes or rideshare, with drop-off and bike valet at 97 Estoria on the south side of the Krog Street Tunnel. The festival's FAQ says no pets are allowed at an event this size.

Organizers also ask guests not to bring outside food or drinks, since the festival is a fundraiser for the parks. Bags and chairs are welcome.

The two weekends before it

Other eastside events on the way to Nov. 7 also pay for neighborhood upkeep. This Saturday, Oct. 24, the 12th annual Inman Park Wine Stroll runs from 1 to 6 p.m. It offers two-ounce pours at 15 venues, including White Space Gallery and the front porches of Victorian-era homes. Tickets are $55, and Kitty Dare on Edgewood Avenue hosts a VIP sparkling-wine tasting limited to 100 tickets at $100. Check-in is at 1028 Edgewood Ave. NE, across from the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station, and proceeds go to Friends of Inman Park for neighborhood maintenance and improvements.

On Sunday, Nov. 1, Oakland Cemetery holds Día de Muertos from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free, and the hosts are the Consulate General of Mexico and the Institute of Mexican Culture. The Brookshire Amphitheatre has already partnered with the cemetery: the Oakl&nd Summer Learning folk-instruments session with Mick Kinney was held there in May 2025.

After the festival, the next milestone for the Brookshire Amphitheatre is its closeout window, currently scheduled for Nov. 23 through Dec. 4.

If you live near Cabbagetown Park, or anywhere Intown, and want to talk about how projects like this shape the blocks around them, Brandon Patterson & Company is glad to share what we're seeing. Request a private consultation.