The Feast of San Gennaro is back for its 97th year and hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on Mulberry Street to celebrate a slice of Italian-American culture. While most attendees know the street festival for its traditional Neapolitan sausages, zeppoles and the Ferris wheel that takes riders right up to a fourth-floor apartment, the event is more of a homecoming for others.

John Fratta, a spry fourth-generation Little Italy resident with salt-and-pepper hair and eyeglasses, is one of the feast's organizers. On a recent Tuesday, he was building a booth for the festival. Fratta explained that his great-grandfather was the first president of the feast, which started as a one-day block party in 1926.