There’s a lot of pork in Asheville, NC. Like, tons. Everywhere you go, they’re advertising beef, BBQ, and, well, pork. It’s sort of funny because there’s also a lot of tofu. (Hey, vegans gotta eat something.) And yet it’s this polarizing, yet mutual, relationship that exemplifies the town’s unique persona. Oh, delightful food.
But food bonds us. It’s the one thing that anyone can agree upon (anorexics, religious fanatics excluded): We gotta eat. And with a weekend party like Moogfest, which essentially strangles the town for three long nights, the overall community of food is an integral facet of the experience. Thousands of festivalgoers wander from bar to club, pub to grill, food truck to kiosk, all with hungry hearts and a myriad of stories.
Similar to SXSW, Moogfest is a community experience. You’re not trapped in one area; you’re wandering around at free will. However, unlike the Austin clusterfuck of entertainment, Moogfest hardly gets chaotic. The walks between the Asheville Civic Center and the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium slightly mirror scenes in Titanic, but you never feel like a flood’s coming. It’s so lax. For a festival awash in electronica, the crowd is sensibly tame. “Do you know where my friend Lucy is?” sounds far less jarring than ”Yo, you got any blow?”
People are good here. That’s never the case. Anywhere. Through cultural elements like food and music, Moogfest continues to champion the finer things of Asheville, while cultivating this sense that creation can still be possible through strictly the mind. Even if you’re running your fingers over dozens of plastic nobs that make woo woo noises.
-Michael Roffman
President/Editor-in-Chief
