Day of the Dead festival moves to The Peach on Nov. 7
Altars, mariachi and a planned candle-lit path from parking, plus Vanderbilt's new campus chief and a federal gun rule shift.
Jose R. Mendez isn't counting on the crowds of up to 6,000 that Lake Worth Beach once drew. If even a quarter of them follow him to The Peach on Nov. 7, he says, that's a big step toward saving the tradition he helped start.
- When
- Nov. 7 · 3 to 9 p.m.
- Where
- The Peach
- Address
- 3950 Georgia Ave.
Jose R. Mendez co-founded Lake Worth Beach's Day of the Dead festival in 2016, and he isn't ready to see it end. With that city sitting this year out, he's staging a smaller version at The Peach, the arts space at 3950 Georgia Ave. under the Southern Boulevard overpass, from 3 to 9 p.m.
It had been Lake Worth Beach's only Hispanic heritage festival, and some commissioners questioned dropping it while many Hispanic residents fear ICE raids. The redevelopment agency cited shrunken state cultural grants, no state money this year, no staffer to run it and weaker 2025 turnout it tied to fear of aggressive immigration enforcement.
The budget is thin, mostly donations and Mendez's own money, with No More Starving Artists, a nonprofit, raising funds to help. He's also doing it to honor his father, who died last month in Guatemala.
Look for altars in the gallery west of the railroad tracks, face painting, artisan booths, outdoor art and costume contests for adults, kids and pets. Raices Creative Arts Academy runs a kids zone, El Segundo serves food and drinks, and performers include a mariachi band, singer Emmanuel Gonzalez, Liz Ramirez's Selena tribute and John I. Leonard High's Latinos A Bailar dancers.
Parking is still being worked out. Mendez hopes to use the lot of the shuttered Publix at Southern and Lake Avenue, with visitors walking north across Southern to an existing path between Lake and Georgia avenues, to be lined with candles, that ends opposite The Peach.
Vanderbilt names Natasha Sachs to run its planned West Palm graduate campus
Natasha V. Sachs started last week as executive director and assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt's planned West Palm Beach graduate campus, a move she calls "deeply personal" because she "grew up in Palm Beach County."
Her job spans campus development, academic support, donors and partnerships, plus work with local government, business and civic leaders. At Coursera, her employer for a decade, she helped build university partnerships as learners grew from about 15 million to more than 200 million.
Her hire follows the Board of Trust's January authorization of the campus, when the university launched a new $250 million fundraising phase for it, and the July appointment of Pratim Biswas to lead its Institute for Engineering Innovation.
Don't expect classes yet. Degree programs are still in development and need approval from Florida regulators. Plans point to graduate study in fields such as finance, engineering and space technology, with AI woven throughout.
ATF drops registration rules for suppressors and short-barreled guns
Suppressor buyers who once waited nine or 14 months, sometimes longer, may now take one home much sooner, says Mike Perez, owner of We Kick Brass in West Palm Beach. Buyers with a concealed weapon permit can walk out the same day, he said, and several customers were picking up suppressors when WPTV stopped by.
Last Friday the ATF said it would stop enforcing the National Firearms Act's approval and registration rules for suppressors and for rifles and shotguns with short barrels. That meant federal sign-off, a government registry and a tax stamp before possession. "The biggest change is less paperwork," Perez said.
Background checks still apply, and machine guns and destructive devices such as grenades stay under federal rules. Congress had already cut the $200 tax stamp fee to zero, and the change follows a Texas federal court ruling.
The catch is Florida law, which bans short-barreled shotguns and rifles unless federal law allows the owner to have them. The ATF says it can't advise on whether an unregistered one qualifies.
Elders shared West Palm's Black history at a Rohi's Readery benefit
Elizabeth Munnings, 100, remembers when Black families in West Palm Beach couldn't use banks and kept their savings at the post office. She shared that, and memories of segregated burials, at a fall fundraiser for Rohi's Readery last month. "The Northwest neighborhood was a city within a city," said Munnings, who led the push for the neighborhood's National Register listing.
Journalist Soledad O'Brien hosted at her home. Founder Pranati Kumar said the Readery's summer program gave out 900 books and logged nearly 13,000 mentoring hours; the youth bookstore and community center also provides meals, counseling and creative programs.
Community Luminary honoree Alisha Winn, whose family has lived in the Northwest Neighborhood for five generations, has led preservation work on Evergreen Cemetery and the Sunset Lounge. James Carman, the city's first Black fire chief, put his advice to the next generation bluntly: "You have to give something to get something."