Crawfish on Fyre…

I missed this story and, thankfully, the event itself. I didn’t find out about it until I checked the HouChron site for other reasons, and I’ve seen no coverage of this on Austin Eater, Austin360, or KXAN.

This past weekend was the Austin Crawfish Festival. It sounds like it went well, except for one small problem…

…they didn’t have any crawfish.

Gallaga and his fiancée waited more than two hours and didn’t taste a single mud bug.

…

“We’re standing around for an hour when it starts to feel like okay, what’s going on here?” Gallaga says. “Because, you know, there’s obviously no crawfish, nobody’s eating.”

…

Gallaga went to the front of the line and learned that festival workers were telling attendees that crawfish was coming, but to no avail. Hungry and frustrated, Gallaga and his fiancée left the line after two hours and headed for a nearby food truck in the general admission section of the festival. Ironically, one of those trucks had crawfish for sale.

…

Three years ago, a couple weeks before the first Austin Crawfish Festival, the organizers reached out to HooDoo Crawfish, asking for a 60-pound boil in four hours, as they were testing out distributors. Sistrunk says the group hustled to make it from Cedar Park to South Austin, only for the organizers to show up an hour late.
They liked the crawfish, and said they’d like to use it for their VIP area. But what gave Sistrunk pause: they had never had crawfish before that moment.
“So you guys sold over $40,000 worth of tickets to people for something you’ve never had, and you have no idea who’s gonna do it or where it’s gonna come from?” he remembers thinking. “I’m like, Oh my God, this is Fyre Fest.” HooDoo declined to take part in the festival. Sistrunk says the Austin Crawfish Festival organizers even stiffed him on the cost of the “test boil.”

The apparent organizers, Crenshaw Ventures, declined to comment to the HouChron. If I see any updates, I’ll link to them: if they wish to respond here, they are welcome to.

Otherwise…well, this is why I never go to any of these festivals. It seems like every one in Austin I’ve heard about (possibly excepting the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival, and that’s in Lockhart this year) has been a complete fiasco.