I had the pleasure of attending the 5th Annual Curl Fest last weekend, hosted by Curly Girl Collective in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Although this was my first time attending, I had been dying to go since I saw people posting about it on Instagram last year, and was determined to go this year! As soon as I found out it would be the weekend before y birthday, I KNEW I had to go. Luckily, two of my girlfriends that went last year hit me up about going, so we got to planning right away.
Clearly the universe was conspiring to make this weekend perfect: we found the CUTEST AirBnB in Brooklyn – literally across the street from the park – less than two weeks before the event! The bus that my friends took was too early for me, since I had a pre-birthday dinner the night before and got a likkle drunk, so I decided in the end to drive up alone on Friday and ended up finding a parking spot RIGHT in front of our spot. Magic!!
That night was pretty chill – once I arrived, I walked with my friends to a ramen spot in Brooklyn, and kept walking for a while to stretch my legs from the long drive while they ate. I literally just walked up and down the street the restaurant was on, but it gave me so much life – I love Brooklyn!! After I met them back at the ramen spot, they paid and THEN I decided I wanted ramen so I made them wait while I ate it LOL. It was worth it!
Once we got back to the AirBnB, we chilled for a bit, then I went to my friend’s friend’s apartment down the street for a house-call haircut. I had been waiting FOREVER for her to fix my last botched haircut, and was SO happy with the outcome! Plus I was super excited to have a cute new haircut for Curl Fest AND my birthday. Yay!
Once she finished my haircut, our other friend met up with us and we walked to a nearby neighborhood bar to get a drink. As soon as we sat down on their patio with our drinks, they told us the patio was closing and made us all get up and go inside. Luckily, the DJ was pretty decent so we all danced inside for a little while. Around 1, one of my friends decided to take an Uber home with me to shower and pass out, while the other two stayed and partied. I was happy to go home earlyish after having a late night the night before and such a long day of driving that day. Plus I knew the next day would be long, and I wanted to have some energy for it!
The morning of Curl Fest, we took our time to grab breakfast around the corner before getting ready and meeting up with our friends and our spot. We saw people walking into the park for Curl Fest around 9:30 and were grateful to have the luxury of walking over closer to when it actually started at noon. We made plans to meet up before entering rather than at the festival, because we knew we were liable to lose each other in a sea full of curls! Typically we are easy to find anywhere we go, but Curl Fest is probably the only place any of us could really blend in and totally get lost, which we all almost did a few times!
We wandered over around 12:30, and luckily went through the side “entrance”, skipping the line that had already built up to thousands of people – it was honestly so long that it was scary to look at! We were all so glad that we skipped it. There were a lot of people inside the festival already when we got there, but not as many as there would be later on – there was still room to walk! Almost as soon as we walked in, we ran into our photographer friend who hung out with us the rest of the day and took incredible pictures of us – how lucky!!
The majority of Curl Fest consisted of people waiting in lines to buy products from the haircare companies that had tents, as well as meet curly hair influencers who were doing meet and greets at those tents. None of us felt like waiting in lines or buying products, so we basically just spent a few hours walking around, taking pictures, and taking in all the epic hair and outfits of the thousands of people in attendance. There was an ENDLESS amount of hair and style inspo as far as the eye could see!
At one point, we went back to the front where the lines were still long AF, because my friends wanted to collect their gift bags (I didn’t get one because I got the free ticket which didn’t come with any swag). It was a bit of a struggle for them to get the bags, because each line only had ONE person checking tickets (WTF!), but they eventually got them! After that, we found a nice spot in front of the stage and danced for a little while before deciding all at the same time that we were over it and ready to head out.
On our way out of the park, we stopped at a cute spot to have a little impromptu photoshoot. Once we got THE pics, we walked back to the AirBnB to rest for a min and look up a place to eat. After way too much searching and deliberating, we ended up deciding on a Mexican restaurant around the corner. As soon as we got there, we realized that EVERY from Curl Fest was there and we definitely would not be getting a table anytime that day. We went right next door to this Guatemalan cafe which shockingly was totally empty and SUPER cute! We got a table and ordered our food, which was so delicious! I was feeling so blessed to magically find this spot and have a nice chill lunch instead of wait forever for a table at the place next door.
We all felt super tired after lunch, so we ordered hot cacao and went back to the AirBnB to nap. It started raining right as we got in our beds, so we took the most relaxing rain nap ever! I felt super tired and lazy when we woke up, so I stayed in bed as long as possible, then got up and threw a jumpsuit on at the last minute to go to a party at the hairstylists apartment down the street. It ended up being a chill little gathering, but it was fun and I was actually happy to have a low key night!
The next morning, we went back to the Guatemalan place for a quick breakfast before they headed to their bus home. I parted ways to take a train to SoHo to meet up with my old college roommate who I hadn’t seen in over 5 years! We had caught up over the phone for the first time in four years a couple months prior, so we mainly caught up about what happened since we last talked, but it was still really nice to see her! We got brunch at this fancy Italian spot, then walked around SoHo taking some cute pics.
After a few hours, I decided I should probably take a train back to Brooklyn and start heading home. I felt very content as I was leaving – it was a very low key weekend but EVERYTHING worked out perfectly and I had so much fun with my friends. Until next time NYC 💕
