Look at the borough's own events calendar and you'll see something odd. September 26 doesn't say "5K Run/Walk." It says "Bob Kochka 5K and Celebration Day," both crammed onto one line, both pointing to Delazier Field. Search the race itself on any national running registry and you get a cleaner, narrower story: a timed 5K starting at 225 Glenwild Avenue, flat and hilly roads, a bib number, a finish time. Two sources, two different events, same Saturday morning.
That gap is the tell. Bloomingdale's own paperwork knows something the running sites don't bother to record: most of the people who show up on September 26 aren't running.
A Start Line on Glenwild, a Party at Delazier
The mechanics of the race are simple enough. Runners and walkers gather at 225 Glenwild Avenue, work through a course the organizers describe as flat and hilly in equal measure, and the results eventually land on a leaderboard split by age group, the way every timed 5K in North Jersey works. If that were the whole story, this would be a footnote for the handful of households with someone training for it.
But the borough doesn't list it as a race. It lists it as a race and a celebration, physically separated from the start line and anchored instead at Delazier Field. That's the detail worth sitting with if you've lived here long enough to have skipped this event every September because you don't run. The celebration is the point for a large share of the town, and it happens somewhere you can walk to without ever putting on a bib.
Twelve Years, One Name, One Reason
This is the 12th year the race has run under Bob Kochka's name. Kochka was a Bloomingdale firefighter for 23 years before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013, and the event that carries his name still directs its proceeds to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Research. A dozen consecutive years is a long run for any local charity event, let alone one built around a single name rather than an institution. It's outlasted plenty of five-year fundraisers that start with enthusiasm and quietly fold once the original organizers move on.
That longevity is what separates this from a generic charity 5K that could be dropped into any town's calendar with the location swapped out. The people organizing it aren't running a national franchise event. They're running the same race, for the same person, for the twelfth consecutive September, out of the same firehouse.
If you're planning to run or walk it yourself, registration and course details are posted at bobkochka5k.com, and pre-race logistics, including bib pickup, route through the Bloomingdale Firemen's Hall on Hamburg Turnpike, the same building that anchors most of the borough's civic life outside of Borough Hall itself.
The Rest of Bloomingdale's Fall, Mapped Across Three Parks
The Kochka race isn't an isolated date on the calendar. It opens a five-week stretch where the borough uses three different green spaces to host three different kinds of gatherings, and none of them repeat a location. Here's how it lays out, according to the borough's own 2026 public events schedule:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Bob Kochka 5K and Celebration Day | Saturday, September 26 | Delazier Field |
| Expedition Bloomingdale Scavenger Hunt | Saturday, October 10 | Sloan Park |
| Dog Costume Parade | Saturday, October 24 | Bogue Pond |
Put those three side by side and a pattern shows up that's easy to miss if you only ever attend the one event nearest your own street. Bloomingdale doesn't have a single town common that carries the whole fall calendar. It rotates the job across Delazier Field, Sloan Park, and Bogue Pond, roughly two weeks apart, each one hosting a different flavor of gathering. A road race and cookout at Delazier. A family scavenger hunt at Sloan. A dog parade at Bogue Pond, which most of the year functions as exactly what its name suggests, a quiet pond, not a stage.
That's not a coincidence of scheduling. It's a workaround for a borough that never built one central green big enough to hold everything, so it borrows three smaller ones in sequence instead.
Where the Post-Race Crowd Actually Goes
Once the Celebration Day wraps at Delazier Field, Main Street absorbs the overflow, and it does so through two spots that couldn't be more different from each other.
River of Beer, at 133 Main Street, sits in a building the Soule family has held for more than 45 years. Before it was a gastropub with riverside seating and a fire pit that stays lit year-round, the same address operated as Fred's Deli, where Fred Soule served the roast beef sandwiches the building was known for. The bar that occupies the space now sources its meat from farms in Sussex, NJ, and rotates its tap list often enough that regulars say they rarely get the same beer twice. It's the kind of history that doesn't show up on a menu, but it's the reason the building still feels lived-in rather than converted.
A few doors down at 60 Main Street, Krios has taken over the address that used to house Café Chameleon, now serving Mediterranean plates in the same storefront that's changed concepts more than once but never left Main Street. It's a different kind of night out than River of Beer, quieter, more of a sit-down meal than a post-race crowd, but it's proof that the same short stretch of Main Street supports both registers.
Neither business sponsors the race. Neither needs to. They're just where the town naturally lands once the finish line clears, which says as much about how Bloomingdale actually uses its Main Street as any zoning map would.
What This Says About the Town, Not Just the Race
None of this requires you to run 3.1 miles on September 26. The borough's own calendar has already told you the truth about that morning: it's a celebration that happens to have a race attached, staged at a field most residents can walk to, followed by a Main Street that's ready for the overflow whether you show up in running shoes or not. The three-park rotation that follows it through October is the same instinct playing out again, just with a scavenger hunt and a costume parade standing in for the finish line.
If you've been treating September 26 as someone else's race, it's worth reconsidering it as your own town's version of a block party, one that just happens to start with a starting gun.
For everything else about life on this side of Passaic County, from the neighborhoods that back up to Sloan Park to the streets a short walk from Delazier Field, The Weiss Group keeps a close eye on how Bloomingdale actually lives day to day, not just how it lists on paper. If a move within town or into it is ever on your mind, we're an easy, no-pressure conversation away.
