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Sunday, November 7, 2010

gypsy picnic


i wish this was going to be all about how much fun i had at the gypsy picnic and how much yummy food i got to try but it's not. the gypsy picnic is a food trailer festival that took place here in austin yesterday. if you didn't know, food trailers are huge here. anyway, the festival had 30 of the most popular local food trailers on site to sell sample sized portions of some of their most popular items. sounds awesome, right? wrong. even with fun fun fun fest, the austin powwow at the burger center, and a ginormous job fair, a disgusting amount of people still showed up at the gypsy picnic.

the event was advertised to last from 11-8. i went with my sister and her family so we had to wait until nels woke up from his nap to go. planning things around a toddler's schedule is fun. anyway, by the time we got there which was around 3:30, the place was a nightmare. the only trailers that didn't have huge lines of over 100 people waiting in front of them were the trailers that had already run out of food. i was beyond hangry so we pretty much left as soon as we got there. there was no way in hell i was going to wait in line for over an hour to get something that i might not even like. or, god forbid, wait in line forever only to have them run out of food before i got any. that happened to a lot of people and that sounds horrible!

i've heard the argument that everyone should have gotten there at 11 when it started but guess what? if everyone did that, 11 would have sucked just as bad as 4:00 did because it would have been OVER CROWDED. and when you advertise that an event is going to last for NINE HOURS, showing up halfway shouldn't be so awful. i was told by someone working the event that the crowd was literally 4 times bigger than organizers were expecting. the entire thing was very poorly planned. from what i could tell, the big time vampire was people waiting to pay for their food, not waiting on the food itself. i would imagine that a large percentage of people did not have exact change so everyone was having to wait for their change. that doesn't seem like it would take that long but when 5,000 people are waiting for change, that adds up to a long ass time. here's an idea, do what they do at taste of chicago and make people buy tickets at the gate (and have more than 2 gates open) to use for their food and drink purchases. so there will be a line to get in but once you're IN it's a much smoother experience.

will i return next year to see if they've gotten their shit together? probably. but i'll tell you what, if next year sucks nearly as bad as this year did i probably won't ever go back.

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