First off, we would like to report that getting booze was not a problem. Not a problem at all. We, in fact, quote a friend of ours who we ran into: "mumble...mumble...mumble...I'm so heated!" We can also report that the bars were buzzing, the liquor stores selling, and the drunks drinking. In fact, according to the Examiner, the liquor stores made out like bandits as everyone took the proposed liquor ban as an excuse to BYOB the thing (no link to the article due to excessive suckage on part of the Examiner's Web site). Which probably explains all the people drinking in places they supposedly weren't supposed to be drinking.
But we can't really say that Gavin's Great Compromise really worked out.
While there was serious boozing going on, the boozing was mainly done in the special "Booze Garden" which was set up on Union Street, right on the edge of Washington Square Park (there was another one somewhere else in the festival but we never made it over to see). The Garden was completely enclosed like a pen and considering the amount of people who wanted to drink at this thing (mainly almost everyone), the Booze Garden was packed. We're talking no-room-at-the-inn-type-packed and tons of drunk people packed into an enclosed area is never a good thing. It's been our experience that it can easily become a bad thing. A very bad thing.