Devon Blunden Austrian beard masters Fritz Sendlhofer and Hans Gassner test Bruce Hagen’s authenticity at the Beard BBQ Our Sideburned Stringer Delivers Penultimate Piece
from World Beard and Moustache Championships And they should. Its not every day that this town sees a few hundred bearded men and many accompanying clean-shaven women parading down their streets and pouring cash into the registers of their trinket shops and beer dispensaries. But the locals are certainly filled with genuine curiosity and anticipation surrounding Saturdays big event. Everywhere we go there are people asking questions, taking pictures, recording video, and generally getting a kick out of this multi-day spectacle. Although many folks had arrived Tuesday night, our cruise ship came in Wednesday, May 20. That evening, two school buses delivered us all to the s welcome barbecue. After seven days, we Beard Boaters had just gotten used to seeing 75 or so bristly faces every single day, but now we were surrounded by hundreds: Artfully waxed moustaches, twisting and looping freestyle beard locks, and innumerable thick, bushy, magnificent full beards adorned every single face, brown, black, blond, grey and red alike. Even most of the women wore fake ones. And they wore them well. Its not weird.
Humbled and awestruck, I could imagine no better setting in which to gorge myself on grilled wild caribou burgers and reindeer pepperoni washed down with as much local Midnight Sun Old Whiskers Hefeweizen (the official beer of the WBMC) as the donated kegs would spit out. Meanwhile, at least three crews of hip, young, ironically-dressed, LA- or NYC-based aspiring documentarians gave each other high fives and sniffed around for characters and potential zaniness.