Is it Fyber Fest?
Incensed guests at New York’s Vegandale are comparing the much-hyped plant-based bash to the “Fyre Festival” due to its hours-long lines, water and toilet paper shortages and other issues.
“We were starving and cranky and miserable,” Rocco Marrongelli, 46, a graphic designer from Queens, told the New York Times of the botched event, for which he queued for an hour before giving up and heading home.
The NYC leg of Vegandale, part of an eight-city roughage-repping bonanza spanning the US and Canada, happened this past Saturday at Citi Field.
The fest attracted thousands of attendees who were eager to visit the 200-plus vendors and rock out to a scintillating performance by GloRilla.
Instead, they were met with a massive line at the entrance caused by too few metal detectors and a lengthy process to procure tickets, which ranged from $15 for general admission to $90 for V.I.P. access.
“I don’t think they had the manpower to face the waves of vegans that were trying to crash those gates,” griped Marrongelli.
One attendee complained in a Reddit thread that there were only “two staff” to control a crowd that had “grown to encompass the entire exterior of Citi Field.”
And that was just the tip of the iceberg lettuce. Guests who managed to get in — and likely thought they were onto greener pastures — struggled to find shade or seating amid the 84-degree heat. Others reported there was a shortage of toilet paper as well as drinking water and water in bathrooms for handwashing.
Brooklyn social media manager Sanirena Denerville, 30, who got in after waiting an hour, said that there were only a few stalls hawking water and she was dizzy from dehydration.
In line, she reportedly heard that at least one person had fainted and was taken to the hospital — a claim made by other Vegandale-goers in the aforementioned Reddit thread.
Denerville said that she couldn’t even wash her hands after going to the bathroom because the sinks had run out of water, the New York Times reported.
“Some security did come out to offer water bottles, and those people just got attacked by the mob,” said Marrongelli.
Online, some are now demanding refunds and claim the recent Chicago event was just as bad. Meanwhile, Vegandale has turned off comments on its Instagram page.
Many critics compared the fiasco to the Fyre Festival, the ill-fated 2017 event luxury music festival that notoriously stranded thousands of revelers on an island with nothing but meager food and emergency tents.
Detractors on Reddit even urged visitors to report the smoothie-slurping shindig to “the NYC Department of Consumer Protection and the NY Attorney General.” The Times reported that the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) got two complaints, as did the state attorney general’s office.
It wasn’t just attendees who took issue with the event, which started in Toronto in 2015.
Erica Muñoz, who owns Pinche Vegana and has had a booth at Vegandale in New York for several years now, claimed that organizers changed the fee structure so they collected a 30% commission on all sales instead of charging a flat fee per booth.
She estimated that this cost her $3,000 — three times what she’d paid during events prior.
Despite the belly-aching, many attendees posted positively about the soiree while Denerville admitted that she enjoyed the delicious vegan offerings like jackfruit empanadas.
“We faced a few logistical challenges, which are part of working with a new venue,” said Jenna Lindsay, Vegandale’s vice president of communications and entertainment. “It was our first year at Citi Field, but the overall experience was really positive.”
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