After two years, the student-run music festival Crawfest made its return to the Berger Family Lawn on April 23. From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., a lineup of incredible musicians performed and — of course — there was crawfish. According to Executive Director Brett Franklin, “over 17,000 pounds of crawfish were eaten by over 10,000 attendees.” The enthusiasm for the festival was palpable. Director of Marketing Sydney Oppenheim said that “for the first time in Crawfest history, we completely sold out of merchandise, sold out of tickets…and had an almost entirely New Orleans based 8 band lineup.” 

If you weren’t a fan of crawfish, there were plenty of booths selling food from top restaurants around New Orleans such as Petite Rouge, Dat Dog, Dirty Dishes NOLA, Arobee’s Kitchen, Nguyen Te Meditation Center and ice-cold snowballs from NOLA Snowballs which provided relief on that hot afternoon. Booths were set up to sell other goods as well. I got a pair of cute beaded cherry earrings from a student-run jewelry business that I’m wearing while writing this.

The incredible design work especially blew me away. It was so cute and cohesive across the festival. Designer managers Emma Schneider and Colby Francis worked tirelessly to create incredible designs for the signs you saw all around campus as well as shirts. Schneider said that her favorite part of the festival was “seeing it all come together” after working tirelessly with Francis to make these cohesive and cute designs. 

Tulane icon and my personal sleep paralysis demon — Carl the Crawfish — made himself known throughout the festival. From 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m a “Where’s Carl” giveaway took place where, if you took a picture with Carl, you would be given a passport that was stamped every time you saw him. The passport could be used to enter a merch giveaway. As if getting jumpscared by him in the Lavin-Bernick Center while I am eating lunch wasn’t enough. 

I noticed the outfit choices as another interesting aspect. Since the event hadn’t happened completely in person in 2019, there wasn’t any sort of pre-agreed upon dress code. I will fully admit to stalking the Crawfest location tag on Instagram to try and get a better idea of the vibe and — to no one’s surprise — found a lot of posts with 2018 and 2019 trends. I remember seeing a few panicked YikYaks on what to wear and heading to the event, I had no idea what to expect. But, the girlies did not disappoint. I saw everything from a T-shirt and shorts to white dresses with puffy sleeves and cowboy boots. 

All in all, Crawfest 2022 was one for the books in many ways. It was the first since 2019, the first to sell out merchandise, and, of course, the first to have Carl. I had so much fun attending and can’t wait to see what they have in store for next year.