'Fyre Festival' of Pizza Parties Charged $75 For Cold Slice In Brooklyn Parking Lot, Guests Say

BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN — Attendees of the New York City Pizza Festival are outraged after spending $75 to eat a thin slab of cold pizza in an old parking lot.

“This was a rotten scam, they promoted this as a pizza festival,” wrote organizers of the Pizza Festival Scam Victims Facebook group. “There were about 5 pies cut into micro slices of really bad pizza.”

“Clearly this is a scam and the organizers should be held accountable.”

Update: The New York Attorney General has promised to investigate the NYC Pizza Festival. Read the story here. (For more on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The festival, which was held in a parking lot near Flushing and Knickerbocker avenues on Saturday afternoon, was advertised as “an eclectic tasting of the best pizza in NYC,” but what guests found was a small selection of cold, small slices on paper plates.

Attendee Connell Burke told a Gothamist reporter, who originally reported the story, that the event reminded him of a notoriously un-luxurious luxury retreat where guests paid thousands of dollars to sleep in “FEMA-style” tents and eat out of styrofoam cups.

"It was like the people from Fyre Festival decided to throw a pizza party," he said.

Burke’s fellow party patrons agreed with his assessment.

“Paid 74$ for the VIP and when I got to the pizza festival at 7:13pm they ran out,” wrote Buck Le Flair on Facebook. “No pizza at all.”

“It was nothing but Jesus thay [sic] stopped me from flipping over those tables,” wrote Vanessa D. Kissee, who drove with her brother from Albany to attend the festival. She added she would add the organizers to her prayers because, “God will deal with them accordingly.”

"The fact that my friend and I spent 55 dollars each for such a shi--- event like this unbelievable!” Patsy Juarez added. “All we got was warm red wine that tasted like ass!"

One angry pizza-seeker got a message from the organizers, Aputumpu — who call themselves “an archive of bands” on their Facebook page — blaming the party rental company Hangry Garden for the party’s problems, which also included an hour-long wait for the doors to open.

“They faked [sic] us up with the venue!” The text message reads. “Hangry Garden delayed this event by an hour!”

But the party rental supply company disputed these allegations on Facebook, arguing that they did not produce the event and could not be held responsible for its flaws.

Aputumpu organizers responded to Patch’s request for comment with the promise that they would organize another event but did not answer whether or not they would provide refunds.

“Untimely delivery of food delayed the fun experiences we all looked forward to this past weekend," they wrote. "A make-up tasting will be announced shortly. Thanks for your patience. Team Pizza Fest!"

Meanwhile, the angry pizza-seekers are organizing an event of their own — filing complaints en masse to Eventbrite, the New York State Bureau of Consumer Frauds and Protections, the New York City Consumer Affairs department and anyone else they can think of.

David Flores recommended, “Report it as a scam to your credit card companies my dudes.”

Header photo courtesy of Chip Shannon