Don't sneak booze into a festival; let the festival come to your booze.
Festivals price-gouging on alcohol has been going on for as long as some evil-genius festival organizer realized that once attendees are inside the event, the fest has a total monopoly on getting them buzzed. As a result, people trying to sneak alcohol into festivals with the rest of their supplies has likely been going on since the day after that discovery. For generations, new and innovative techniques had to be passed down by word of mouth, or scrawled on the back of rolling papers, but nowadays, these tips can be spread immediately through social media—like a Facebook user who documented his success burying some booze on festival grounds before the event was even set up.
In the lead up to New York City's annual Labor Day festival, Electric Zoo, one enterprising young man by the name of Alex Diamond posted his plan for sneaking vodka into the event on Randalls Island. "Three weeks ago we buried a Nalgene bottle full of vodka on the grounds of Electric Zoo before they started putting up the stages," he wrote. "Let's see what happens." If you believe everything you read on social media, and in this case, why not, according to a follow-up post, Diamond proclaimed, "Got it," and including a selfie with his illicitly-acquired booze.
In a separate post on a Facebook page called "Festival Pro Tips," the scheme was outlined more explicitly. "The planning of the burial was simple. We used Google maps and marked our spot on GPS so we knew where it would be. Then we waited," the post states. "The initial part of their plan was allegedly easy. However, Alex admitted they ran into a little trouble once inside the festival." The exact nature of that "little trouble" remains unclear, so needless to say, attempt this trick at your own risk.
Regardless, sneaking vodka by way of some pirate-approved buried treasure plan is still a lot classier than many of the alternatives. Case in point, a story last month where someone was busted trying to sneak a $10 bottle of vodka into a race track hidden inside a giant salami sandwich.