I believed I used to be being intelligent approaching New Hope from the New Jersey facet of the Delaware River. I knew from expertise that visitors can get difficult within the fashionable weekend vacation spot, particularly throughout festivals and particular occasions.
After simply parking in Lambertville, N.J., I felt downright smug heading to my project, nearly as if a drive was with me whereas I walked throughout the bridge on a fantastic spring day.
I used to be transporting to a spot far, distant for a May the 4th celebration, even anticipating an encounter on the bridge with somebody from Garrison Carida, the Pennsylvania-based contingent of the 501st Legion.
Alas, solely uncostumed pedestrians had been crossing with me, and even after I reached Main Street on the opposite facet, there was not the galaxy of cosmic cosplayers I anticipated to see.
When I lastly got here throughout a few Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers, I began making images instantly. I discovered way back to not maintain off whereas ready for “better” alternatives to current themselves — just like the legions of white costumed “bucketheads” marching in formation I’d seen when googling May the 4thfestivals and parades.
As my reporter colleague Stephanie Farr wrote, New Hope’s annual Star Wars celebration continues to be in its early phases.
There by no means was a squad, or perhaps a platoon’s value of Stormtroopers, however by mid-day there have been extra folks — and pooches — in Star Warscostumes.
Jasper Keeler, 12, posed together with his canine Wedge, dressed as an Imperial fleet TIE fighter and named after Wedge Antilles, the insurgent pilot who survived the assault on the primary Death Star and have become a veteran of Rogue Squadron. Jasper attended together with his mother and father, Lily Chiu and Jerome Keeler, of Princeton.
When requested why Wedge was dressed as an “enemy” spaceship, his dad replied: “He switched sides.”
His mother rapidly corrected him.
“No,” she stated. “He stole the fighter.”
Popping right into a nook espresso store, I ran right into a mom and daughter celebrating a May Day Festival taking place on the town on the similar time, for “All Faeries & Magical Folk.” They had been there with many others of their ears, horns, wings, shimmer and tails.
A dressing up parade downtown or a lightweight saber battle on the bridge would’ve been nice to see (between Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda and a fairy or unicorn even). But as Stephanie wrote, “even without that, it’s a reminder of the power stories have to bring people together.”
Geena Harney, as Princess Leia, shows her namesake sundae with boyfriend Samuel Medina. The $18.45 Princess Leia Sundae is “Two warm cinnamon buns, a scoop of ice cream, caramel, whipped cream, a light saber, and a star wars themed chocolate. The couple is from Trenton.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Fans and family members take photos in New Hope during the town’s annual Star Wars Day celebrations.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Stormtroopers mingle on Main Street.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
James Buckley (left) of Newtown, Buck County is shunned by Stormtroopers who recognize he’s wearing the badge of a New Republic Marshal. His costume wasn’t official, just something he made himself called Disney Bounding, a way Star Wars fans have created to wear clothing in Disney World that still adheres to the park’s Disney Costume Policy.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Stormtroopers loiter outside a restaurant.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A young fan of a young Yoda enjoys a frosted drink. Blue Milk comes from Banthas, the Tusken Raiders’ thick furred beasts of burden on the planet Tatooine.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Rainbow fairy Jennifer Ponton from Hunterdon County, N.J. watches the Star Wars activity on Main Street. She was in town to attend a May Day Festival for “All Faeries & Magical Folk” on the similar time.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A teenager in Stormtrooper costume passes exterior as rainbow fairy daughter Jennifer Ponton and her forest elf mom Barbara Ponton (left) take a break from their very own competition on the town.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
From left: Erin Bayer; her mom Jeanne Senior; and Cherie Keegan (Jeanne’s sister) pose with cutouts of droids R2-D2 and C-3PO in entrance of a photograph wall in an ice cream store. Keegan wears a Rebels baseball jersey impressed by X-wing pilot flight fits that includes the Rebel Alliance “starbird” insignia and the quantity 77 (the yr the unique “Star Wars” — later titled “Episode IV — A New Hope” was launched) Bayer is sporting a Jar Jar Binks T-Shirt (he was the Gungan outcast from Naboo).Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
T-Shirt that includes Flyers goaltender Daniel Vladař as “Darth Vladar” on the market at 4 the Love of Thingz in New Hope Sunday in the course of the city’s annual Star Wars Day celebrations.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Since 1998 a black-and-white picture has appeared each Monday in workers photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” picture column within the print editions of The Inquirer’s native information part. Here are the newest, in colour:
May 4, 2026: The hooves had been all that remained of a life-size elk statue — sawed off on the ankles — in historic Harleigh Cemetery in Camden on Tuesday. The bronze elk statues had been put up in cemeteries everywhere in the nation on the flip of the twentieth century in what was referred to as an “Elks Rest,” an space reserved for deceased members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In many lodges of the fraternal group based in 1866, members who couldn’t afford a burial had been supplied house within the “Rest” freed from cost. The statue was since recovered and is again within the cemetery’s possession. Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 27, 2026: What only a week in the past was a spring-time cover of rosy blush blossoms is now a comfortable carpet of pink petals, on a sidewalk alongside Wayne Avenue in Germantown.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 20, 2026: The water is turned again on in LOVE Park this week, marking one other milestone as seasons change within the metropolis. The splash fountain and basin-less principal fountain within the park formally often known as John F. Kennedy Plaza, was a part of the location’s 2018 renovations, that got here after the previous park was flattened out, eradicating a conventional fountain and benches and ranges that made it so engaging to skate boarders.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 13, 2026: Workers arrange the stage — with a cooling tower backdrop — for a Gov. Mikie Sherrill occasion on the PSEG Salem and Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J. Sherrill later signed laws meant to make manner for brand new nuclear power tasks within the Garden State by eradicating a key allowing hurdle that has created a de facto moratorium on new nuclear energy for many years. Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 6, 2026: Work continues into the evening, two flooring above road stage in Old City.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 30, 2026: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (third from proper) meets with members of the South Jersey enterprise group whereas her youngest daughter, Marit, waits in foyer (rear). Mom was attending a fireplace chat occasion hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey in Mount Laurel earlier this month.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 23, 2026: The plowed snow mountain vary at a nook of the PATCO Haddonfield station parking zone in mid-March. After the massive Jan. 25 and Feb. 23 snow storms the transit company began a contest to guess precisely when the humongous snow mountain will lastly soften. They are providing a $20 Freedom Card to the winners.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 16, 2026: Traffic transferring at 45 mph on the Ben Franklin Bridge is photographed utilizing a sluggish shutter pace from a PATCO commuter practice touring at 40 mph.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 9, 2026: Marcin Danych (left), a pal now dwelling in Chicago, movies Mariusz Sliwa, his spouse, Magdalena, and their 6-year-old son, Tymek, from Poznan, Poland, subsequent to the Rocky statue on the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When Mariusz was a boy, his father was “a typical factory worker; he was working a lot, too,” Sliwa stated. “He worked seven days a week. Even weekends.” When that they had time collectively at evening, they might watch “Rocky,” “playing it over and over, in the VHS.” It was simply part of his childhood, so he needed his personal son to go to Philadelphia to expertise it. And to make a video for his dad, who couldn’t make the journey. Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 2, 2026: Lynasia Allen, a junior horticulture scholar at W.B. Saul High School is on lunch break on the Convention Center whereas establishing for the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show earlier than it opened to the general public. Her faculty’s exhibit is titled, “Up-Rooted, Re-Planted.”Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 23, 2026: Glenn Bergman, alongside together with his spouse, Dianne Manning, and different bystanders on the President’s House, attempt to stop a counter-protester from ripping down notes posted by guests. The Mount Airy couple had simply arrived for the annual Presidents’ Day rally by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition on the opposite facet of the wall. The confrontation was over in a couple of minutes when the lady left. Visitors have been taping casual indicators to fill the void left by the elimination of panels about slavery final month in Independence National Historical Park.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 16, 2026: Which got here first: the soiled snowpacked berm of frozen slush or the graffiti? This is likely one of the bigger city artifacts revealed because the area emerges from weeks of a report snowpack from the Jan. 25 storm.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 9, 2026: Walking by a corrugated metallic culvert referred to as the “Duck Tunnel,” a pedestrian navigates the passageway beneath the SEPTA tracks on the Swarthmore College campus. Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 2, 2026: A lightweight-as-air Elmo balloon rolls alongside a sidewalk in Haddonfield, propelled by the wind as heavy snow begins to show to ice and sleet throughout Sunday’s storm.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
January 26, 2026: The President’s House in Independence National Historical Park hours in spite of everything historic reveals had been eliminated on Thursday in response to President Donald Trump’s govt order in March that the content material at nationwide parks that “inappropriately disparage” the United States be reviewed. The website, a reconstructed “ghost” construction titled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010), serves as a memorial to the 9 folks President George Washington enslaved there in the course of the founding of America.Read extraTom Gralish / Staff Photographer