GoogaMooga 2013: Less Shitty Than GoogaMooga 2012

Oh, GoogaMooga. Thou hath been dubbed "Great" & thou hath been highly-anticipated for two years running now & thou hath now twice befuddled those expecting to be wowed by your bounty of food & music. Should we hate you? Should we love you? Should we think of you as that one crazy friend who we have that crazy night out with once every year but who we definitely don't need to hang out with any other weekend? 

Last year, your inaugural edition started off as an absolute shitshow, with a first day that saw vendors running out of food and festival-goers bereft of working ATMs & cell-phone service and a general air of anger & incivility. After that much-maligned first day, you worked through most of your first-day hiccups, er...belches & things ran smoother on the second day. Sure two full days with tens of thousands of oft-drunken people trampling across the Prospect Park grounds left a definite impact but, in the end, you gave ticket holders a refund & in doing so, acknowledged your awfulness. Since money makes the world go round, 'twas a very grown-up step for such a young festival.

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Prospect Park Ghost Dog up For Adoption

Photo via Flickr User A Crom

Are you in the market for a new pet?

The Sean Casey Animal Rescue, who captured Prospect Park's legendary and elusive ghost dog back in May for treatment of an injured leg and lyme disease, recently put him up for adoption.

Nearly 40 people have applied to adopt the wild mastif, though Casey says that because of the dog's past, they need to be very selective when choosing an owner.

“He just needs someone to be patient and control him," he told the Brooklyn Paper. "Somebody with large dog experience who could physically hold on to him.” He also added that the dog is "very trusting and very loving and has no aggression.”

If you want to put in an application to adopt the ghost dog, contact the Sean Casey Animal Rescue on 153 E. Third St. between Fort Hamilton Parkway and Caton Avenue in Kensington. 718-436–5163.

A FiPS Guide to Great GoogaMooga Fooda

It's Great GoogaMooga week, bitches! To prepare you for the upcoming 2-day food, wine and music orgy festival, we here at FiPS are going to be talking about it nonstop from now 'til Saturday.

Yeah, motherfucker! Are you ready to stuff your face, GoogaMooga style? Good luck with that. If you're spending next weekend at the Great GoogaMooga Festival, the two-day Prospect Park event dubbed as "an amusement park of food & drink," you're obviously not doing so for the music. It's all about the food. I mean, sure there's a James Murphy DJ set and a performance by The Roots -- but Hall & Oates as a headliner? That shit's LAME (Ed note: Some of your fellow FiPS writers would disagree, Shawn).

Maybe you were one of those lucky enough to score a free ticket to the event. Maybe you even forked over dough via Craigslist to get your hands on one. If so, you'll have access to food & drink from 75 food vendors, 30 brewers & 30 wine makers. Whether you'll have to wait in ridiculous lines over & over again is yet to be seen. Personally, I'm assuming CLUSTERFUCK.

At this point, if you weren't able to score a ticket, you do have the option of spending that extra $250 you have lying around on an ExtraMooga pass. With it, you get VIP access to as much food & drink as you can handle, alongside events such as a discussion about food & music with Ruth Reichel, Aziz Ansari, James Murphy and David Chang, and multiple Q&A's with Anthony Bourdain. There's even a Gatsby-themed brunch.

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A FiPS Guide To GreatGooga Moosic

via whatupdoe.com

It's Great GoogaMooga week, bitches! To prepare you for the upcoming 2-day food, wine and music orgy FESTIVAL, we here at FiPS are going to be talking about it nonstop from now 'til Saturday.

If you haven't heard, The Great GoogaMooga, at its core, is about food. Hence the internal rhyme (I assume). But to aid in digestion, a gaggle of musical acts will gently massage your intestines via sonic wave. And, OK, let's admit: save maybe the Roots (and, I suppose, Hall & Oates), these aren't big names. It's also heavy on NYC-based groups, and shame on us for not seeing more local musical talent in a city overflowing with it. Long-story-short, you'll be in a food coma anyway, so it's probably all gonna sound great. There will be two stages, and acts will go from 11:30AM-8PM Saturday, and 11:45AM-7:30PM Sunday. Here's the FiPS rundown of the two-day fest's ear food: 

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The Roots, Hall & Oates on The Great GoogaMooga Music Line-Up

The Great GoogaMooga has been piecemailing us deets on the two-day music, food and drink fest going down in Prospect Park on May 19th and 20th. They finally released the music line-up, which is as follows:

• Daryl Hall & John Oates (Sun)
• The Roots (Sat)
• Fitz & the Tantrums (Sun)
• Holy Ghost! (Sat)
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band (Sat)
• Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires (Sun)
• The Pedrito Martinez Group (Sat)
• Escort (Sun)
• Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens (Sat)
• Bear Hands (Sat)
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Sat)
• Lez Zeppelin (Sun)
• Peelander-Z (Sun)
• Unchained "the Mighty Van Halen Tribute"  (Sat)
• Fort Lean (Sat)
• Lucius (Sun)

FiPS writer Amanda Tweeted her thoughts about the line-up, which I'm sure was a shared experience among many of us:

"For everyone that reads their email too quickly, Led Zeppelin is not playing at @Googamooga. LEZ ZEPPELIN is playing. What a let down."

I'm still pretty stoked for The Roots...