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This major North End feast is adding security checkpoints this year. Here’s what to know before you go.
The added security aims to prevent the “visibly drunk” teenagers that came to the festival in “droves” last year.
The North End’s annual Fisherman’s Feast is intensifying security this year, following an increase in disorderly conduct last year.
“The other [2024 North End] festivals have had great success with the security measures that they used, and we’re following suit with what they’ve done for the first two festivals,” Co-Chairman Danny Puccio told Boston.com. “We’re adding a little more because our festival is a little bigger.”
The 114th feast, set to take place Thursday through Sunday, Aug. 15-18, will have three security entrance points.
All bags will be subject to search, no outside bottles or liquids will be allowed, and anyone under 21 will not be permitted to enter without an adult, according to Puccio.
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Organizers are hiring a private security company for the festival this weekend, Puccio said, in an effort to prevent the “visibly drunk” teenagers that came in “droves” last year.
“Last year, they were coming in in packs of hundreds, maybe even thousands, and it was very difficult to keep under control,” Puccio said. “It made it a very uncomfortable situation.”
Puccio said 2022 was the first year he saw a rise in young people disrupting the North End festivals. Puccio said in 2023, the crowd and underage drinking got so out of hand that they had to shut down the event stage at 9 p.m. instead of the usual time of 11 p.m.
Many of the teenagers, he said, came to the festivals from the North Shore and South Shore suburbs. Puccio attributes the increased attendance to social media.
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“At one point last year, one of my members saw something on social media that said, ‘Hey, let’s all meet down the feast and shut it down,’” Puccio said.
The post went viral and “next thing you know,” he said, “you got kids from all these different towns coming down.”
“They disrupt a 114-year-old religious tradition that some of us hold very sacred,” Puccio said. “As sacred, if not more than Christmas.”
Puccio expects approximately 250,000 people to attend the festival over the four days.
“We’re still a family-friendly festival,” he said. “We’re just trying to keep the drunk kids out.”
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