A $75-A-Ticket Pizza Event In Brooklyn Is Being Called The "Fyre Festival of Pizza" After Organizers Screw Everybody Over
NBC – Pizza-hungry New Yorkers and other customers are fuming after shelling out as much as $75 for tickets to a pizza festival where attendees claimed they only got slivers of cold pizza slices at a “shady” Brooklyn parking lot — and now state prosecutors are launching an investigation into the event.
The New York City Pizza Festival, which took place in a parking lot in Bushwick Saturday, was promoted as a “day long celebration of the dough, cheese, tasty sauces and delicious toppings,” according to Gothamist, but people instead got “cold and awful” pizza that were “smaller than a sample size,” as one person complained on Facebook.
“It was like the people from Fyre Festival decided to throw a pizza party,” attendee Connell Burke told Gothamist.
Video from the event shows lines around the block of a near-empty parking lot. An attendee said on Facebook there were just three tents serving up slices of pizza “smaller than my palm.”
First of all shout out to Fyre Festival for setting the gold standard in disastrous events. Any time any event goes off the rails and ends with angry mobs of upset customers and investigations by the authorities it will now be known as “The Fyre Fest of…” Pretty big accomplishment.
And we’ve got a good one from this weekend: The Fyre Festival of Pizza in Brooklyn. People shelled out 75 bucks a ticket (some drove in for it from out of state!), showed up, stood in a long ass line, and were greeted with….a basically empty parking lot. Couple of tents, some cold slivers of pizza – tiny slices, slices for ants – nobody around to explain anything to them.
Understandably, there was some anger.
Via Daily Mail:
‘It was my girlfriend’s birthday so I got the VIP tickets, so I spent $150 total for the two tickets,’ he added.
‘There’s three pop-up tents to my left, one where they’re taking cold pizzas out of delivery boxes and cutting them.
‘Those pictures don’t do it justice, because they look like they’re normal-sized plates but they’re actually cake-sized, like what you’d use for cake at a children’s birthday party. They’re small, tiny little slivers of pizza.’
One user said: ‘Are you f***ing serious? I was there at 5, and there was nothing. This was a fuckin scam.’
Another added: ‘Freaking scam! We drove from Central NJ for what?! We got there at 4 and the rumour was it was a scam. Issue me my $200 for 4 tickets. I will make it my mission you never run another event!’
But it doesn’t stop there – they doubled down with a Burger Festival scam at the same damn time!
To add further insult to injury, organizers of the festival also seemed to have sold tickets for a Hamburger Festival scheduled at the same exact time and place as the other festival.
It advertised ‘mountains of french fries, oceans of ketchup and waterfalls of beer,’ and had ticket prices ranging from $35 and $69.
They promoted this as a pizza festival and a hamburger festival, said a post on page Pizza Festival Scam Victims, a page dedicated to getting answers.
‘People who arrived early said there were about 5 pies cut into micro slices of really bad pizza. There were no hamburgers! Clearly this is a scam and the organizers should be held accountable.’
‘Those people were sitting, waiting in line to get the burgers that were not there,’ Burke added.
A seemingly incredible amount of scum-baggery going on behind the scenes. Not sure how they thought they could pull something like this off and get away scot-free with things like, you know, the internet, and social media, but bless their hearts for trying.
I mean you have to at least admire the effort here – blaming it on Hurricane Harvey.
Pulling out all the stops. Also blamed the event producer:
The festival organizer, Ishmael Osekre, didn’t respond to Gothamist’s requests for comment. On the Facebook event page, however, he blamed event producer Hangry Garden for delaying the start of the event.
But Hangry Garden co-founder Jeremy Asgari told Gothamist his own company had been misled by Osekre. He said Hangry Garden had been hired to provide furniture and games at the pizza festival, but red flags started popping up in the weeks leading up to the event. On the day of the event, festival organizers still hadn’t paid Hangry Garden — and that’s when the event producers had to pull out.
Who knows, we don’t have an official comment from them to tell their side, maybe there’s a great explanation for all this. Personally I think if you charge $75 a ticket for a pizza festival and you don’t have any pizza at it, that’s bad.
I think it’s safe to say we can officially state this: don’t go to food festivals.