Remember When You Could Actually Get a Pickle on Pickle Day?
Seems like a no-brainer question – remember when you could actually buy a pickle at the annual Lower East Side Pickle Festival? Back when the party spanned the single block of Orchard Street between Broome and Grand, in front of Guss’ Pickles.
Ever since the business improvement district turned the yearly event into a trendy food fair, there is literally no wiggle room. It’s near impossible to score some dill unless you visit while the vendors are setting up for the day.
Show up at 2pm, and you’re shit outta luck. Lines snaking through the narrow Hell Square streets. It’s almost as trying as waiting on line for the Coney Island Cyclone on a hot summer day. No pickle is worth the wait of a queue the length of Rivington Street (see above).
Yesterday was no exception; a victim of its own success. Did you make it out? More importantly, how were the pickles?

When it was still called the LES Pickle Festival, Sep. 2008