If you walked over to NE 1st Street and North Flagler Avenue on the first Friday of this month expecting food trucks, a DJ, and the sidewalk spilling over near Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, you found an empty corner instead. Old Town Untapped, the block party that has defined first Fridays in Pompano Beach's original downtown for the better part of a decade, closed out its season back in June. It won't be back until fall.
That part isn't a secret to anyone who has lived here more than a summer. What fewer people seem to have clocked is that Old Town didn't actually go quiet. The music just moved two weeks and about a hundred yards.
The season that just wrapped
Old Town Untapped started in 2016 as a way to spotlight Pompano's craft breweries. It has grown into a full first-Friday festival: local bands, a DJ, food trucks, art vendors, and docent-led gallery tours at Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, all free and running 6 to 10 p.m. at NE 1st Street and North Flagler Avenue. The event draws crowds from Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties, not just the neighborhood immediately around it.
The 2025-26 season kicked off October 3, 2025, and closed on June 5, 2026, with a band called Making Faces playing the last show before the summer break. In between, the lineup ran through Sacred Union Band's funk-rock set in November, a Grateful Dead tribute from Crazy Fingers in April, and an 80s tribute act called Rubixx closing out May. Then the calendar goes dark for four months, the same way it has every year since the series settled into its current October-through-May rhythm. When the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Agency board met that October, CRA Director Nguyen Tran reported that the event's return from its 2025 summer break drew strong turnout and good weather, the kind of routine update that only makes sense once you realize the pause is built into the calendar on purpose, not an accident of scheduling.
What actually keeps running
Here's the part that doesn't show up on the flyers for Untapped. A second, smaller series called the Backyard Jam Concert Series runs the third Friday of most months, including the ones when Untapped is on hiatus. It happens in the strip of green behind Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, wedged between South Bar & Kitchen and The Soulful Steep, from 6 to 9 p.m., built for a fraction of the crowd. One band. No vendor booths. Bring your own chair or blanket.
This isn't an improvised workaround. Back in 2024, the city explicitly billed a version of Backyard Jam as its summer series, running the first and third Friday of the month from July through September specifically to cover the stretch when Untapped wasn't happening. The pattern held. By June 2025, local arts coverage was noting that live music simply doesn't stop in Old Town over the summer, because Backyard Jam keeps the porch light on while the bigger event sleeps.
The 2025-26 calendar backs that up with real names. JP Soars and the Red Hots played in January. February brought Acoustic Fingers, an acoustic side project from Crazy Fingers, the same Grateful Dead tribute act that would go on to headline Untapped's April show, this time reworking Americana and bluegrass on melodica and glockenspiel. ReVibe covered four decades of hits in March. Joey Calderaio brought reggae-rock in May. June's date was skipped for the Juneteenth holiday, not for a seasonal pause, and by August the series was still going strong. Box of Rocks, a genre-hopping band that folds acoustic guitars, bass, keys, and a saxophone into one set, is booked for August 21. Yacht Lava, a supergroup pulling members from Fusik and The Heavy Pets, follows on September 18.
Here is how the two events actually compare, side by side:
| Old Town Untapped | Backyard Jam | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | First Friday, October through May | Third Friday, most months, including summer |
| Hours | 6 to 10 p.m. | 6 to 9 p.m. |
| Location | NE 1st Street and North Flagler Avenue | Greenspace behind Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, between South Bar & Kitchen and The Soulful Steep |
| Scale | Bands, DJ, food trucks, art vendors, gallery tours | One band, bring your own seating |
| Cost | Free | Free |
Two doors down, a building with its own history
If you're planning to catch a Backyard Jam set, dinner is a short walk away. The Vault sits at 61 NE 1st Street inside the old First Bank of Pompano building, which dates to 1922 and was, according to city records, targeted by the Ashley Gang in 1924. The building's original vault survived and was handed back to the restaurant by the Pompano Beach Historical Society. Owner Jessica Spillman leaned into that history instead of covering it up. Murals depicting the Ashley Gang line the walls, and the space reads part speakeasy, part 1920s bank lobby.
The build-out got support from the same CRA that oversees Old Town's redevelopment: a $40,000 grant toward facade work and the outdoor deck, plus another $97,000 toward electrical, plumbing, and HVAC upgrades. The investment paid off in more than décor. In 2026, The Vault picked up a Gold award for Best New Restaurant in the Sun Sentinel's South Florida Favorites, along with a Silver for Best Salad and a Bronze for Best Appetizers. It sits a block or two from Backyard Jam's greenspace, close enough to make the two an easy pairing, and close to South Bar & Kitchen, whose patio wraps around a hundred-year-old banyan tree, and The Soulful Steep, a tea house operating in the same building that housed the Rose Tea Room back in the 1920s.
Planning an Old Town Friday in August
If you treat Old Town Untapped as the neighborhood's only real event, summer can feel like a dead zone. It isn't. Backyard Jam is still on, still free, and still happening two blocks from where the bigger party used to be. Parking works the same way it does for Untapped, at City Hall on West Atlantic Boulevard or the Cultural Center a few doors down. Bring a chair.
Old Town Untapped, if the last several seasons are any guide, should return with the first Friday in October, kicking off another run through next May. Until then, the third Friday is doing the work of holding the neighborhood's music habit together.
That's the actual shape of a Friday night in Old Town right now: one big monthly event on pause, one smaller one keeping the schedule intact, and a bank-turned-restaurant in between worth the short walk either way.
Whether you're settled into life in Pompano Beach or getting to know the neighborhood from a few blocks away, Engel & Völkers Fort Lauderdale keeps a close eye on what's actually happening on the ground here. Reach out any time you want a local read on a specific block, building, or corner of Old Town.
