Tagged: GoogaMooga

Even Marc Maron Had a Lousy Time at GoogaMooga

Part of the Extra Mooga package from this weekend’s crap fest included seeing Marc Maron brew coffee (Pow!) with the Third Rail Coffee crowd (Wow!) and a live WTF Podcast.

But since it cost $250 to get an Extra Mooga ticket, we couldn’t afford to go. And I’m glad we didn’t pony up.

Today, Marc Maron addressed the listeners of his WTF Podcast:

I can honestly say with complete confidence: I will not do that to you again. I will not alienate the WTF people by being part of a situation where it’s really too expensive for you to get in because, quite frankly, I could have used you there. That’s all I am gonna say on that.

Sorry, you too had a bad time, and thanks for thinking of your fans!

Extra Post-Mooga Belly Aching

Since Gothamist devoted multiple posts about the food and music festival, I figured I would devote a second post to list some more complaints, other than how under estimating capacity worked against our giving them money.

  1. There were no activities. If I wasn’t waiting for a musical performance to start or waiting in a line for food, I would have liked something to do. Could I play a game (other than bocce)? Could there have been a Skeeball parlor or something similar?
  2. Why do I have to buy tickets to taste beer or wine?
  3. Why did I have to pay $250 to watch Marc Maron do his podcast or at least cup some coffee. (Pow!)
  4. Speaking of the $250 Extra Mooga ticket, why did those poor people have to wait in the general admission food lines? I sympathize for those who wasted that amount of money and didn’t get to eat much because they had to wait in hour-long lines.
  5. I remember when I downloaded the app and noticed that it had to connect to the Internet to work, I abandoned it. I knew that 20,000 people in Prospect Park would spell mobile phone shut down. That’s exactly what happened.
  6. The crazy thing about New Yorkers is that we’re so paranoid about standing in line that we will spend all of our time “standing on line.” Maybe people in Tennessee will only look for food when they’re hungry. But not New Yorkers. New York is not just about scale: it’s about panic. We will stand in a line because we’re worried about standing in a line. And we’ll complain about it the entire time.
  7. The whole point about going to a festival like this is about tasting a variety of food in the same day. But the lines were so long that we basically had to choose one or two places to eat. Doing so forced us to eat somewhere we could have visited on any given day. Rather than bike to Prospect Park and wait 90 minutes for a lobster roll, we should have gone to Red Hook and had one there. There would not have been a line. And it would have been just as good.

At least it was free admission, and there was a very efficient bike valet.

GoogaMooga Was a Waste of Time but Not Money

It was a good thing that we had a house warming party and a birthday party to attend because spending the day at GoogaMooga would have been an absolute waste of a day.

David Rockwell, Collaborative Designer & Festival Designer, told us not to worry about lines: “Festivals are what we do…The people running some of the other festivals that have line troubles dont have as much experience as we do.”1

The lines were indeed the problem. Not only did we wait for an hour and a half for a Lobster roll that we could have bought at East Seventh Street in Manhattan, we also found every other line so prohibitively long that we basically left after only two and a half hours. I had budgeted $80 for all the food and drink that was available at the festival. However the lines were so long that we gave up and stopped spending after eating “only” a bland chicken sandwich and a lobster roll. Total damage $25.

What do Nashvillians know that we don’t?