Jacksonville's homegrown holiday is coming back to the riverfront. On September 4, JaxParks will host a free 904 Day celebration at Riverfront Plaza in Downtown Jacksonville, combining the city's area-code pride day with a First Friday-style block party featuring food trucks, live music, vendors and the man who coined the DUUUVAL chant.
The event, announced in a JaxParks Facebook post, runs from 5 to 9 p.m. and will be hosted by Easy E on Air, the radio personality credited with popularizing the extended DUUUVAL chant. According to First Coast News, Everett Eason, known as DJ Easy E, stretched out the chant on air in the late 1990s while working at local hip-hop station 92.7 The Beat, now 93.3 The Beat, turning a phrase shouted on Jacksonville streets into the city's signature war cry.
The lineup includes live music from Adam Cotton and Jupiter's Porch, face painting and bubbles for kids, 904-themed interactive art and photo opportunities, and a lineup of food and dessert trucks. The Riverwalk Bar will also be part of the festivities, and vendors interested in setting up a booth can apply through jaxparks.coj.net, though all vendors must obtain a required vendor pass ahead of time.
A Civic Holiday Born From Local Business Boosters
904 Day traces back to 2021, when a coalition of WJCT Public Media, Downtown Vision Inc., JAX Chamber, Visit Jacksonville and marketing firm Wingard launched a coordinated campaign to promote the area code as a badge of local pride, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record. The campaign drew inspiration from similar area-code-based small business pushes in Miami and Orlando. Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan has since issued official proclamations designating September 4 as 904 Day, encouraging residents to support local merchants, non-profits and municipal parks.
The stakes for local commerce are real: small businesses make up 99.8% of all businesses across Florida, and more than 70% of Northeast Florida enterprises employ between two and nine people, including the owner, per Visit Jacksonville. That statistic underscores why city officials lean on 904 Day to steer foot traffic and spending toward independent shops and food vendors rather than national chains.
A Park Built on the Bones of the Old Landing
Riverfront Plaza itself carries its own layered history. The nine-acre Northbank site was previously home to the Jacksonville Landing, a festival marketplace that operated from 1987 until 2019 before the city demolished it between late 2019 and early 2020, per Wikipedia. Phase 1 of the park officially debuted late last year as a six-acre public space with an elevated rooftop playground, a café pavilion, an interactive splash pad and a flexible event lawn along the Northbank Riverwalk, as Folio Weekly has detailed. Phase 2 construction, including a beer garden and bridge connections, is scheduled to continue through 2027.
In July, the city selected European Street Cafe, a locally owned restaurant brand with nearly 50 years of history in the area, to operate the café space inside the plaza's main pavilion, according to the City of Jacksonville. The pick fits a broader municipal strategy of anchoring the new public spaces with familiar local names rather than outside chains.
Getting There and Parking Downtown
904 Day at Riverfront Plaza also overlaps with the city's monthly First Friday-style programming; Downtown Vision Inc. has run its First Wednesday Art Walk since 2003, drawing more than 500,000 visitors to Downtown Jacksonville over more than two decades, per DTJax. For those driving in on September 4, the 28 Forsyth Garage offers parking for roughly $10, while the Water Street Garage charges $5. Street parking throughout Downtown Jacksonville is free after 6 p.m. on weekdays, a rule regulated by the City of Jacksonville that lines up neatly with the evening event's start time.
The celebration is also a showcase for how far the city's waterfront redevelopment has come. Jacksonville operates the largest urban park system in the country, spanning more than 80,000 acres across more than 400 city-managed parks, seven state parks and three national parks, according to Visit Jacksonville — a scale that makes Riverfront Plaza's transformation from a shuttered mall into a riverside gathering spot feel like part of a much bigger civic project.
