A forest of pale and youthful legs on the march, heading for Day 1 of "The Great GoogaMooga."
The hidden heart of Prospect Park, fenced off and submerged under a sea of the hip and hungry.
Messaging on a melon, part of a wall of fruit near the "UrBarn," an installation (visible in the background) by Pratt students and others to promote farm-to-table-ish, sustainability-ish things.
It was, however, mostly about the beer. A line of apocalypse-refugee proportions snaked away from a stand distributing some sort of proof that you were old enough to drink. At my age, I think my face should be my passport.
The "line talkers" held a variety of perky signs intended to mollify the line waiters. With music within earshot most of the time, the crowd seemed fairly mellow about it all. Spouse waited almost an hour for fried chicken, but enjoyed "Holy Ghost" during the wait.
On a perfect spring day, the sun's intensity put shady spots at a premium.
It was what restaurant critics often call "an attractive young crowd." Many seemed to know one other or to have descended in groups.
In the "Hamageddon" section, a heavy metal band tore it up while a whole pig rotated on a spit inside this gigantic porcine idol. You have to give the founders of this feast credit for thinking big.
It was fairly painless to score a "Dirty Duck Dog" with lemon-scented sauerkraut from the Craft stand, and a plate of three "fried cheesecake bombs" from a Prospect Heights restaurant called Robert. (Dog, delicious; cheesecake fryballs, kind of like fried ice cream, weirdly compelling.) At all the concessions, the workers were cranking the gourmet chow out frantically; doing this again all day tomorrow would kill me.
By 4 p.m., lots of places were running out of their esoteric specialties. Apparently, this also happened to the folks who forked over $250 for "Extra Mooga" tickets in an ultra-exclusive enclave of foodiness. Our endurance event, at least, was free (well, $12 for two duck dogs and $6 for three cheesecake balls). Altogether, Spouse and I concluded that restaurants had much to recommend them...and that we were probably about 20 years too old to truly appreciate the event.