HONK! Fest 2026 Turns Davis Square, Massachusetts, into a Maximalist’s Dream

Events
Written By Sonny Oram

Every fall, the streets of Davis Square, Somerville are flooded with marching bands and fantastical outfits. Playing everything from Klezmer to Balkan to Brazilian samba, Afrobeat, to hip-hop, the HONK! festival celebrates reclaiming space by making noise, auditorily and visually.

The streets were filled with bright, psychedelic colors, polka dots, patched jackets, hand-painted slogans, distressed denim, political graphics, safety pins, customized accessories—and, of course, a bird wearing a light-up bow tie!

 
 

Customized cane

 

Bowtie Bird!

Davis Square statues with “Fuck Ice” Shirt

 
 
 
 
 
 

“We got married to this song!”

And finally, the fit of your trusty reporter!

 

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Sonny Oram

Boston-based multidisciplinary artist Sonny Oram is the founder of Qwear, a leading voice in the queer fashion movement for more than 15 years, and the author of the foreword to Queer and Trans Fashion Brands: Resistance and Revolution in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). His work has been featured in HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Design*Sponge, and QTYPE Magazine and he's spoken on panels at MIT, South by Southwest, and Simmons Nursing School.

His earliest published work was created at age ten: a series of collages made from cut-up magazines, accompanied by original text exploring themes of gender, cultural conditioning, predatory advertising, and media objectification. In 2025, images of these collages were published in Queer and Trans Fashion Brands: Resistance and Revolution (Bloomsbury Press) and the Fashion, Style & Popular Culture journal.

Through Qwear, Sonny has launched influential campaigns, including the award-winning #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike with Yasmin Benoit, and continues to create spaces for underrepresented communities across internet and print media. He has also used search engine optimization (SEO) to increase the visibility and diversity of queer representation in online search results, helping terms such as “androgynous style,” “bisexual style,” and “asexual” reflect a broader range of identities and experiences.

https://sonnyoram.com
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