With the Great GoogaMooga kicking off the summer food festival onslaught (or future shit shows), the NY Times takes a look at the current New York food culture: "Much of the food-snob energy will percolate in the improvised spaces in between: street markets and concert festivals, food courts and food truck feedlots, underground events and barter gatherings, where the focus will be not just on the food, but also on the experience of beating your friends to it."
Smorgasburg, Hester Street Fair, Meatopia, and Governors Ball are just some of the many food-filled events name-dropped in the article. Eric Demby, Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg co-founder, tells the Times, "The food vendors are like artists. You’re eating, but also meeting the people who are making these things and creating the culture. The people themselves are quite cool: they often live in your neighborhood; they quit some job or want to quit some job. You’re not talking to a celebrity." The Times tries to balance that quote by pointing out, "Some readers may object that a well-made kimchi taco is not the equivalent of a Basquiat canvas, but others will remember that such high-blown rhetoric attended the 1980s’ art world as well." Also, it'll never cost $16.3 million to buy some fried anchovies...though the painting will last longer.
The NYC Economic Development Corporation says that food manufacturing—"mostly in small businesses concentrated in Brooklyn"—has actually grown 14% since 2007. And it seems like the sky's the limit, since foodies love to spend money on food... and post photos of the food online. Hester Street Fair founder SuChin Pak says, "It's definitely a shared experience, but it has a mentality of having gotten there first, being the influencer in your group. Those thousands of people all consider themselves food critics. If you have an Instagram account, you feel you can say something was delicious."
