On a normal Tuesday, the Booty Loop runs the way it always has. A cyclist leaves a car in the church lot at Providence and Queens Road, the one that's reserved for services on Sunday mornings and open the rest of the week. A dog walker cuts through Freedom Park's paths to link up with the sidewalk along Queens Road West. Someone finishes a Lagree class at the new studio on Selwyn Avenue and jogs the last half mile home past Queens University's brick buildings. None of it requires a detour. The roads that make up the Loop, Queens Road West, Hopedale Avenue, and the Selwyn Avenue stretch, stay exactly as open as they were the day before.
This Friday through Sunday, that changes, but not for the reason most people driving past Freedom Park will assume.
The Loop Nobody Has to Plan Around
The Booty Loop is roughly three miles, and the route is simple enough that first-time visitors run it without a map: north on Queens Road West, a right onto Hopedale Avenue, back onto Queens Road, then around through the heart of Myers Park past oak canopy old enough to predate most of the houses beneath it. Runners who want more than three miles tack on the Freedom Park trails, adding close to two more miles through the 98-acre park that sits at the Loop's southern edge.
The infrastructure that supports all of this is informal by design. There's no dedicated Loop parking lot. Regulars park where the neighborhood already has room, most often the church lot at Providence and Queens, which sits empty on weekdays. The newest addition to the Loop's daily rhythm is a Lagree fitness studio that opened this year at 2909 Selwyn Avenue, right on the route itself, adding one more reason for someone to park nearby, work out, and walk the last stretch home. None of this was built for a crowd. It was built for a neighborhood that already knew where to leave its car.
What Festival in the Park Actually Requisitions
Festival in the Park returns for its 62nd year this Friday, September 25, through Sunday, September 27, running from 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. It's free to attend, staged entirely inside Freedom Park, and it draws a crowd that dwarfs anything the neighborhood sees the rest of the year. In 2024, estimated attendance reached about 150,000 people across the weekend, well above the 85,000 or so the festival used to pull in years earlier. That kind of scale doesn't fit inside a park's own lot, so the festival borrows the neighborhood's.
The official solution is the Atrium Health Myers Park lot, sitting directly across East Boulevard from the Freedom Park entrance. Parking there runs $20 for the weekend. For anyone who'd rather skip the lot entirely, the festival recommends rideshare drop-offs at 2435 Cumberland Avenue or 1600 Princeton Avenue instead.
None of that touches Queens Road West or Selwyn Avenue directly. The Booty Loop's actual pavement stays open the entire weekend. What disappears is the slack. The same streets and lots that absorb the Loop's everyday parking now have festival traffic layered on top, and a resident who'd normally leave a car at the church lot for an hour-long ride is competing with festival-goers looking for the same block.
The Rules Inside the Park Push People Onto the Loop Instead
Freedom Park itself gets stricter for these four days. City ordinance bars pets from the park grounds during the event, and skating, skateboarding, scooters, and bicycles aren't allowed inside either. For a dog walker who normally loops through the park's own paths to connect with the Loop, that path is gone for the weekend. The workaround is the sidewalk along Queens Road West and Selwyn Avenue instead, meaning the Loop itself likely carries more foot traffic during festival weekend than it does most Saturdays, even though almost none of it is festival traffic in the literal sense. It's neighborhood traffic that got rerouted by a rule written for the park, not the street.
A Different Kind of Closure, Nine Months Away
The Loop has exactly one weekend a year when its own roads close to cars, and it isn't this one. That happens in July, when the 24 Hours of Booty charity ride takes over the Loop's streets directly, closing them to traffic for a full 24 hours so cyclists and walkers can circle without stopping for intersections. The next one is scheduled for July 23 and 24, 2027. It's the opposite kind of disruption from what Festival in the Park creates. In July, the roads themselves become the event and cars are the ones displaced. In September, the roads stay open and it's the parking and the park paths that get requisitioned instead. Two events, same three-mile loop, and neither one closes it the way the other does.
What This Actually Means for the Weekend
If you're on this stretch of Myers Park through Sunday, the practical read is simple. The church lot at Providence and Queens will be busier than usual, and the Atrium Health Myers Park lot across from Freedom Park's entrance is functioning as festival parking, not neighborhood overflow. Cumberland Avenue and Princeton Avenue will see more rideshare traffic than a typical weekend. Dogs are still welcome on the Loop's sidewalks, just not inside Freedom Park itself for the next four days. And the roads you'd actually run, bike, or push a stroller on haven't changed at all. The only thing that moved is where everyone parks to use them.
If you keep an eye on this stretch of Selwyn and Queens Road year-round, so does The Kim Hamrick Team. Reach out anytime you've got a question about what's changing in Myers Park, festival weekend or otherwise.
