Fly by

Hoopfest turns 25 this week. But don’t bother with a cake.

Unless you can rustle up half a million candles from the bottom of your kitchen junk drawer.

From the initial 2,009 players who launched this paean to curb-to-curb basketball in 1990, so many have followed that the grand total figures to top 500,000 with this edition. So the personal stake in the celebration runs deep – and that’s not even counting the 3,000 volunteers needed each year, or the quarter of a million who make their way to the city’s core just to see and be seen.

That’s why it’s always easier to take in the big picture of the Hoopfest mosaic, even when the fun is identifying all the tiny tiles.

Here’s a few of our favorites, from 24 years of Hoopfesting: