Great Googally Moogally

photo by craig cavallo

The Great Googa Mooga took place in Prospect Park over the weekend and the event drew over 30,000 people. If you got there early enough (before noon) you had about 25 minutes to hit as many of the 75 stands as possible before the lines grew to 60 deep and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

A "Googa Moula" tent was set up to provide a cashless card system, where a value was placed on a card that you could then use at the wine and/or beer pavillions. Sounds like a great idea, but the system malfunctioned before noon (people were let in at 11:30am), so people were issued red tickets at a $1/ticket rate that you could then exchange for booze.

Most food vendors ran out of food around 4pm. Do or Dine sold through 800 of their foie gras donuts in just over 3 hours. As stands slowly began to run out of product, lines at neighboring vendors began to swell and waits grew to upwards of an hour.

Eater has an interview with co-founder Rick Farman that sheds some light on the incredible fest as the founders plan to smooth things out and make a return next year.  "Hopefully we'll be able to make it up to the people that had a bad experience. We look forward to making it a better event, and we are the kind of organization that's good at adapting."

When asked if they will be doing the event again Farman said, "We have every intention of doing it next year."