Well this is embarrassing: the event organizers behind last weekend’s controversial The Great Googa Mooga food and music festival in Prospect Park announced today that they will be offering a full refund to those who purchased “Extra Mooga” tickets for $250. They’re even refunding the $17 service fee.
Perhaps even more surprising is that Superfly came right out and acknowledged the event’s largely negative feedback on the event’s website. “To those who had a frustrating experience on Saturday – we are sorry,” the organizers write. “We truly regret the first year glitches and really appreciate your patience as we worked to smooth them out.” Interesting that they only mention issues happening on Saturday.
There doesn’t appear to be any info on the event site about the refunds, but Superfly released the following statement to the press: “We promised you a terrific Extra Mooga experience this past weekend and we didn’t deliver, particularly in providing an adequate amount of food and beverage on Saturday…To officially extend our apology, we’re offering you a 100% refund of your Extra Mooga ticket price, including handling fees.”
You can submit a request to refunds@googamooga.com.
Monday evening the fiance and I braved the rain for a much anticipated night cap at Greenpoint’s newest bar, Beloved. I had already read a number of greatreviews and am happy to report that every word was true.
We stepped into Beloved and found a couple seats at the end of bar. The crowd was a little sparse around 9pm but started filling up as the next couple of hours passed. The bar is beautiful – well designed and offering ample seating as well as a yard in the back. The environment was comfortable and laid back and the bartender genuinely nice and personable.
I ordered that evening’s drink special – not sure what it was called but it consisted of a honey syrup, lime juice, and bourbon shaken together with blueberries. It was, in my humble opinion, perfect. The drink was not overly sweet, balanced by the lime juice and the smokey bourbon. I also appreciated the perfectly ripe blueberries that garnished the drink as well as the very reasonable $8 price tag. The fiance ordered the Allsorts Inc, consisting of tequila, mezcal, and an assortment of ingredients that we had to ask the bartender about, like Falernum. The result was a delicious multilayered drink that had “a lot going on (but in a good way)” that the fiance thoroughly enjoyed.
All cocktails on the menu are $10. All draft beers are $6 and cans of Tecate are an easy $3. Beloved is located at 674 Manhattan Ave in Greenpoint, close to the intersection of Manhattan and Norman Ave.
Tomorrow, the Filmwax Film Series is featuring new work by local filmmaker Noelia Santos:
Filmmaker Noelia Santos presents two of her short films and a work-in-progress. Her work blends narrative storytelling with nonfiction approaches and a highly cinematic visual sense. In ”Triptych,” three women in transition are portrayed against the backdrop of a teeming metropolis. Though they don’t know each other, the characters’ intersecting paths form a larger storyline of emotional growth and cyclic experience within the city – itself a figure of constant change and renewal. In ‘Focus,’ a photographer works alone in her studio, struggling with an idea for a new project. Her wanderings through the lively city streets fuel her search for inspiration. When she finally discards her original idea, new connections in the work compel her to find the “missing image” out in the world.
“We didn’t cut any corners,” Mr. Walentas said. “If we had, this just wouldn’t have worked.” ….
The hotel’s website, proudly declares: “Wythe has rooms for artists, friends, brewmasters, musicians, concertgoers, mothers, brothers, grandmothers, bowlers, interns, twins, engineers, vignerons, and chefs,” which sounds exactly right.
The same exacting quality is behind every bar (four, counting the event spaces) and on every plate in Reynards. “You won’t read the farmer’s name on the menu because we’re not into boasting, but know that we’ve met every single one of our producers and shaken their hand, and that is the kind of experience we want to share with our guests,”
Mother nature teased us with amazing weather all weekend only to wake us up Monday and Tuesday to an intense case of blue balls. “Rain rain go away come back another day!” because you’re ruining my life with this rain crap. I’m so ready for McCarren Pool (capacity 900 hipsters = roughly 15,000 tattoos) to open this summer. In the meantime, we have no choice but to cope. If you’re lame and don’t plan on coming out to play after work today, no worries, here are a few videos to keep you occupied and get some testosterone circulating in those “Gonads”. I’m Justin Little by the way, whisper sweet nothings into my ear if you hear something you like. Enjoy!
Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, The Master, revolves around a faith leader known as “The Master” (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a man named Freddie Sutton (Joaquin Phoenix) who becomes his unlikely associate. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who memorably collaborated with PTA on There Will Be Blood‘s score, will reprise that role for The Master, and the film’s new teaser flaunts a new percussive orchestral track composed by Greenwood.
This morning we asked readers if they survived this past weekend’s The Great Googa Mooga festivities in Prospect Park. And from what I’ve read online and heard from coworkers, few did. People complained about issues like insanely long lines for beer and food, food running out, and logistical problems (no added cell reception or public transportation). Even those who bought the $250 tickets left dissatisfied.
I made it to the event at noon on Saturday and I remember thinking how much space there was to move around compared to other festivals I had been to, like Bonnaroo. I had lunch at 1pm after watching Fort Lean perform and waited in line for only five minutes before getting food (Num Pang Sandwich Shop). I even stood in line with a friend at a second place and waited only three minutes there (DuMont Burger).
Things changed however when we were done eating and went to get beer. The midday crowds were starting to flood in and the issues with logistics were quickly becoming apparent. There were too many separate lines (one for ID checks, another one for beverages, others for food) which faded into one another, made getting from one place to another nearly impossible, and each lasted at least twenty minutes. Event workers at an ID check tried to move things along by checking IDs for some people at the middle of the line, but that made things more confusing. It was 3 p.m. by the time we finished our first beers (not slow drinkers, just slow lines) and by that time the lines had grown so long that we would have had our second ones at 4:30.
I felt like I got what I paid for with those free tickets. But food blogger Joanne Wilson describes her negative experience at the Extra Mooga section: “I can’t believe that I paid $250 a head for this. A complete rip-off. I am not the only person out there yesterday who wanted their money back. The experience, considering the food amount, was worth about $50 at best…We left the show starving.”
Countless Twitter users echo these sentiments (although most didn’t get to enjoy the brief calm like I did). “Going to #googamooga was the human version of what my cat must go through when she runs frantically into a room & forgets why. Ate nothing.” “1000s starving, stranded in the heat, standing on endless lines for food.” “Our Katrina.”
People speculated – somewhat facetiously – that Friday’s bomb scare on Bedford Avenue must have been an art project because, after all, it is Williamsburg. Turns out they were right. 50-year-old artist and Brooklyn resident Takeshi Miyakawa was behind the installation and has since been arrested.
Police apprehended Miyakawa on Saturday when he was putting up another installation at the intersection of Bedford, Lorimer, and Nassau and charged him with planting false bombs. He was arraigned on Sunday and will be put through a 30 day mental health evaluation.
The objects – “I Love New York” bags that contain LED lights and battery packs – were for NY Design Week and supposedly would have come down today. An artist who works with Miyakawa described him as “polite, calm, and presentable.” The New York Times states that the artist intended the installation to be “a display of his love for the city.”
According to his website, Miyakawa was born in Japan and has been living in New York City since 1989. He mostly designs furniture, some of which is priced at $20,000.
Williamsburg’s own Dinowalrus recently released their critically-acclaimed sophomore LP, Best Behavior; a decidedly more dance-driven and synth-based approach than their debut, the noise rock-inspired %. My Social List caught up with Pete Feigenbaum, their self-proclaimed “curator of riffs” at El Beit to discuss his band’s progression, the erosion of local music scenes, the continued gentrification of Williamsburg and what he described as a Warholian appropriation of culture as a driving influence in his band’s sound.
Peter Rittweger – You’ve said that Andy Warhol’s or Mike Kelley’s “appropriation” was a source of inspiration on Best Behavior. I almost immediately think of your album cover, which is an image of the Domino Sugar factory, this “iconic” Williamsburg landmark. % was more “no-wave” or “noise rock” inspired, while Best Behavior seems to be more influenced by the best music AROUND you. Would you say the image symbolizes that sort of appropriation?
Pete Feigenbaum – Yes and no. I mean, the album cover is just an allusion to Animals, that Pink Floyd album… which isn’t a very good album, but that album cover really resonates with me. I mean both albums (% and Best Behavior) are sort of appropriations in a different way. I have this theory that nostalgia comes in twenty year waves. I guess there’s only really been two years between the two albums, but in my mind it feels like more, so we’ve jumped from 1982 to 1992 in our minds, haha.
I was vaguely interested in this Madchester acid-house sound for a while, so it just made sense to dig even deeper into that and really let that influence the songwriting on Best Behavior, and the production too. So I feel that that’s the biggest re-appropriation on Best Behavior…like taking ideas from the Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Charlatans, Primal Scream, Candy Flip, Flowered Up… all those bands. I feel like our interest in them is a very unique thing. It seems like no one else around here is into that. Revivalism can be kind of hokey, or even a cheap thrill but I like to think the way that we’ve done it, we’ve kind of made it our own and made people see this style that they may have overlooked previously.
