[FiPS Was There]: 3 Writers Re-Cap Their GoogaMooga Weekend

Photo via Eric Isaac (food.ericisaac.com)

Well people, GoogaMooga has come and gone. All that remains are sunburns, soggy wrist bands and what I'm guessing is a huge fucking mess in the park. A few of our FiPS writers ventured into the mouth of The Great GoogaMooga over the weekend, so if you didn't make it out and are curious to know what your ass missed, here are their stories: 

GoogaMooga Day 1: BY MIKE

Dearest FiPS followers: I sincerely hope none of you threw down $250 for the "Extra Mooga" at Saturday's Great Googa Mooga festival debut. Because if so, you are probably pissed off in the way that only getting cheated out of a significant hunk of cash can make you.

I read rumblings from multiple social networks that said the so-called "Extra" areas ran out of food, utensils, tickets, melted-cheese baths, or whatever else they were giving people -- and fairly early (Brooklyn Spaces Facebooked about it around 5 o'clock.). So some folks plunked down two Benjamins and a Grant for...nothing. Entry to a festival that thousands of others claimed for free. Yikes.

Luckily, I paid no such blood money. And so this review is for those who stuck with the gratis tix. Here's how the first day of Gogoa-Mooga-ing went down:

ID bracelet line, circa 4pm.

* Lines: First of all, people are gonna talk about lines. They will talk about lines while they wait in line. They will talk about lines while they look at the lines to decide if they want to wait in the lines. They will take to thetwitternets to face-bitch about the lines after they've left said lines.

Dudes, it was a free-entry (mostly, see above) festival in one of the most populous spots in the country. One with foodie-crazy artisan assholes. If you didn't expect lines, I've got a bridge/$250 "Extra" pass in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

That said, yes. The lines could be shitty long. I heard tales: One woman told me of the hour she waited for rice balls. "But, it was totally worth it!" Really? Clearly she has stronger feelings about balls than I do (Boom!). Three-and-a-half hours to get tix for beer-tasting. My thoughts? Leave those lines. Find others.

I went in planning to eat a couple things only at reasonable lines. Which is what I did. It earned me a mediocre Sloppy Joe from an artisanal meats place that probably had the shortest line for a reason. I stayed the hell away from the ID-bracelet line, which was Anacondian when I got there around four. By 6, the alcohol lines were quite manageable. I got a (better) sandwich from Mile End Delicatessen after less than 30 minutes.

Tell me: Is standing with your friends, with food imminent, while music plays, an appreciably more hellish experience than sitting with your friends, with no food imminent, while music plays? Apparently so.

Brooklyn jonesin' for a slice.

* Money: If you stepped foot into the park this weekend, it's likely that you spent more money than expected. Even if you went in expecting not to, your wallet departed the Great Googa Mooga sporting a svelte new figure. Yeah, the festival was "free" (again, see above), but it's free the way a shopping mall is free. I'm sure we all, at some level, knew this, but the whole thing is essentially a corral for consumerists. The music isn't the point -- consuming the most basic consumable, pricey food, is the point. The vendors are the point. 

And they effectively get you to keep buying. I'm not sure what it is. There may be some nefarious marketing feng-shui behind the food-stall layout. Our hunter-gatherer brains are mezmerized by the bounty. I think it's also the portions: small enough to poke your appetite, but still leave it grasping for something more. Of everything they screwed up, the Great Moogas did place the reward button in just-the-right corner of the cage.

Didn't drop enough dough on food? Buy a $25 t-shirt to drop food on!

* Disappointment: Surely there came a time in every GoogaMooga goer's day when a man walked up to your portion of a line, as you stood sweating in the sun, and announced that they were out of vanilla shakes. Other things I saw get gone were soft-shell crab sandwiches, the above-mentioned rice balls, and fro-bananas. And I'm sure more. But most of the food huts were still humpin' to the end of the day.

* Tables: Shockingly good table situation. That may sound minor, but I was pleased. You expect, at a big eating thing like this, you'll end up awkwardly balancing plate, fork, cup, water bottle, etc. while bumbling around grass-sitters. Mooga had a bunch of slim tables, many strangely fashioned out of police barricades, to avoid that problem. One instance of great foresight.

Sorry, probably creeped-out lady. Was actually taking a pic of the barricade-table.

* Music: Did y'all know there was music here? The bands were mostly secondary, and that was palpable. It's likely that this was just not the festival for me, because I wanted that rush of excitement when the band you came to see amps up. What makes a festival fun? To me, it's the transformation of the quotidian -- just some park -- into a mass, shared experience. That energy of a sea of people rushing at the same stage. 

By comparison, the atmosphere at GoogaMooga was kinda dull. You just don't get the same group electricity from lines of people enjoying soft-shell crab as you do from masses of kids crushing on their indie loves.

But, music there was. I reached the entry line as the Van Halen tribute band ripped into a seriously convincing version of "Panama." Kitschy, state-fair stuff, true, but I enjoyed the flashbacks to fifth-grade bowling alleys nonetheless. "Holy Ghost" over on the bigger, main stage coaxed a decent quantity of boogie from the overwhelmingly white, BBQ-filled crowd with some indie dance-rock. That felt more like the festivals I know.

The Mighty Roots on the main stage.

And, of course, The Roots closed it out: the only real name on the line-up (mild apologies to Hall & Oates.). The Roots bounced and hopped and referenced all of rock-soul-hip-hop like the Roots do, with the expected-but-welcome MCA shoutout. They were solid. My expectation for Day 2 was that Googa would smooth over the fuck-ups , and the music would follow the crowds that followed the food. 

* Weather: The weather was perfect, right there in the '70's, enough sweat to give everyone that vaguely sexual patina of sweat, without the grossness of late summer. Comfortable. 

Final verdict? Googa doesn't require much of you. The food's there to get, and you can pick which lines you want to tackle. It's nice out in May. Enjoy the park with some friends: there's music and snacks. Just don't buy the "Extra" pass.

GoogaMooga Day 2: BY DANIEL

Friends of Park Slope, I have survived The Great GoogaMooga Festival 2012. There was food. There was music. There was love (of food). I’m exhausted. I was in the sun nearly the entire day, and I have the burns to prove it. Please don’t tell my mother I forgot to bring sunscreen.

First, let’s talk about the GoogaMooga wristbands. The “Media” wristband is periwinkle (thanks Crayola). I guess this is pretty close to the color of the “VIP” wristband, although I’m not sure I ever saw one. But the point is that I guess someone at the VIP entrance to ExtraMooga wasn’t aware of the difference. So when this silly blogger waltzed up to the VIP entrance, he was allowed admittance. This was easily the best thing to happen to me all day.

The roasting of the boarThe ExtraMooga section of GoogaMooga was THE SHIT. Most people paid 250 bucks to get in, but your intrepid blogger paid nothing AND got to experience GoogaMooga with the other half. There was a brunch at the boathouse that involved waitresses in flapper dresses (I believe it was Gatsby themed). There were wine tastings. Drinks were included! (Of course, I was too hungover to even consider imbibing, but one can be excited about free drinks even when he cannot partake.) There was a roasting wild boar. I also had the best iced coffee of my life, provided by Counter Culture Coffee (hey look, you gotta cherish that kind of memory).

But all good things must come to an end. We left ExtraMooga after about an hour, and later found out that we were never supposed to have been there when one of the guards quite rudely turned us away. By the way, what was with the entryway/security system? There was absolutely no organization, many of the workers were pretty rude, and there was never any consistency in the way our IDs were checked. But I digress. I know what you actually care about: was there enough to do even without ExtraMooga?

Yes. There was plenty to do at GoogaMooga. I learned a lot about how to make sausage at a session at the Urbarn hosted by Adam Kaye of Blue Hill. Honestly, the dick jokes at a sausage-making session write themselves, and there was much giggling. I also had a really good time at Escort’s performance on the Nethermead Stage. Their bright disco sounds were a perfect afternoon treat, and they included a much appreciated tribute to Donna Summer.

And now onto the food. Lines were long, but I managed to obtain a horse bologna and foie gras grilled cheese from foodie darling and recently closed M. Wells. This $15 sandwich was greasy and delicious and absolutely the kind of thing I would never eat outside of an event like GoogaMooga.

Holy deep fried Oreo, Batman!I also had a few desserts. I really liked the chocolate covered frozen banana with peanuts and sea salt from The Big Banana. I also had an excellent milk shake from Dumont Burger. But perhaps the king of all desserts was the deep-fried Oreo from James of Prospect Heights. While we missed out on the Fried Cheesecake bombs that Brooklyn Based recommended as one of the 5 things to eat at GoogaMooga, the Oreos that were substituted in later in the day were awesome. 

Finally it was time for Hall and Oates. These dudes had us on our feet. They made our dreams come true! Standing amongst the Ray-Ban clad crowd in their boat shoes and Tom’s, I realized it was exactly what I wanted to end this exhausting day in the park.

I LASTED 45 MINUTES AT GOOGAMOOGA: BY ERICA

I realized this weekend, definitively, that I am far too fucking old for music festivals of any type. I have no patience, I can't stand big crowds, I get sunburned too easily, and I refuse to step foot in a port-o-potty. So yeah: take my review with a grain of salt. 

However, I still had a pretty shitty time at Googa Mooga. 

Here's why: 

*After being sent here, there and everywhere, it took us about an hour and a half to find the press tent so that we could check-in and get our wrist bands. When our press passes were approved a few weeks ago, I was told that I'd receive an email 48 hours prior to the event with instructions on where to go and what to do when I got there. Well, I never got any email. And neither did anyone else apparently, because by the time we finally found out where we were supposed to go, we had inadvertently joined a band of about 8 other annoyed, grumbling, hot, frustrated press peeps that were also lost. Along the way we all asked about 117 people where we should go and we got about 110 different stories. There seemed to be loads of people around we could ask...but most of them, while trying to be helpful, had no fucking clue what they were talking about.

*Everyone else in our group of 12 angry men got a press pass AND a VIP pass. Now based on the fact that theVIP pass ended meaning nothing, I guess no biggie. And believe me: I get that FIPS is not exactly the NY Times. But also, how many of these other bitches did an entire week of daily Googa Mooga coverage before the event. I'll tell you how many...zero.

Photo via Eric Isaac (www.food.ericisaac.com)

*You couldn't get any of the good shit cause the lines for the good shit were way the hell too long. Now look: I guessed that the place would be crowded, and duh: there's not much to do about that. However, if the whole point was to offer us really amazing food, I completely missed out on that. Cause I ended up waiting in shorter lines for all the shitty stuff, that didn't taste very good, and then just got angrier that everything was so meh.

 *There were only two entrances/exits and there should have been at least 5. Putting the press pass thing aside, it was a gigantic pain in the ass to get in AND out of that joint. 

*Signage was horrendous. There were some killer elements to the festival itself, and everything there looked great, and professional, and well thought out. However, it was hard to figure out what was where. There were some lovely maps, but a sign here or there with a fucking arrow would have bee helpful.

Having said all of that, it looked like the Googa Moogapeople were aware of the frustrations and were trying to be as responsive as they could (at least according to their Twitter/FB feed). This was the very first time this thingwent down, and as someone who has put together events for thousands of people before, I can attest to the fact that this shit ain't easy. But yeah: I lasted about 45 minutes before deciding to turn around and go home.