Big Gay Ice Cream's Douglas Quint On GoogaMooga Treats, That Gawker Piece

If you haven't read that New York Times trend piece about how food is now bigger than music, or the snarktastic Gawker response, you're probably not all that stoked about Brooklyn's music/food festival The Great GoogaMooga this weekend.

Still, all the hype means we had to chat up Big Gay Ice Cream's co-founder Douglas Quint, one of the collaborators of the events, who is organizing the sweets tent with partner in crime Bryan Petroff.

His thoughts on Gawker's proclamation that food is most definitely not the new music?

"It's obvious that people are looking for something different to have fun with, and I think that's sort of how food and food celebrities slipped into it," he tells us. "Popular music has gotten to the point where if you like a popular artist, the product that they put out has almost nothing to do with them. Most pop stars are autotuned and they're corporate entities."

With the rise in small food businesses, however, people get a bit more of the real thing. "There's plenty of horrible corporate food, too," he says, "but most music stars are corporate creations and we're not at the point where most food stars are."

Of course, Quint rides along with the likes of adventurer Anthony Bourdain and Eddie Huang, not necessarily the oft-ridiculed Paula Deen. "It also helps that, especially in New York, you can go to Colicchio & Sons, and you see Tom Colicchio walking around and you see him on TV. And Tom is an interesting cat, he's worthy of celebrity."

GoogaMooga's lineup so far is fairly impressive: David Chang, Anthony Bourdain, Ruth Reichl, and the aformentioned Tom Colicchio will make appearances, alongside musical performers The Roots and Daryl Hall & John Oates. So what's Quint looking forward to trying at the festival?

"Here's the thing. When you're cooking or working at a food festival you have almost no time to go and try other people's food. It's sort of a drag," Quint says. "So what happens is people bring you stuff and you have to find out what you're eating." He's hoping Eddie Huang and Tom Colicchio will stop by.

As for their own menu, Quint and Petroff will be serving up milkshakes at the Big Gay Ice Cream tent instead of their customary cones: an horchata milkshake and a ginger curry shake. The two of them are also hosting a disco party Sunday night for Extra Mooga, DJed by Hesta Prynn and populated with entertainers.

And though Quint's bassoon (he was trained at Juilliard) won't be anywhere near the festival, the dance party should be reminiscent of those mixers at music camp. "Every time I went to a music camp, twice a summer we would take over the cafeteria and have a dance, a mixer," Quint says. "It was at the wrong place but for the right reasons."