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I went to the San Francisco beard contest last night, just for the fun of watching it, but some of the people there cajoled me into entering the contest. So I did. And I won!
When I won, I was blown away.
The crowd was almost entirely under age 40, and Jack is 27. I am not in their generation at age 63. I figured I had a snowball's chance in hell of winning their vote, so I just kicked back and really enjoyed the ride. Well, maybe the crowd saw I was not heavily invested in the outcome and liked that. Or maybe they just thought it would be cool to elect a guy with a white beard. (Except for Larry who went with me, I was the only guy with a gray or white beard in the whole place!) Or maybe the crowd was just wanting a change.
I found myself pinching myself as we left, because it all felt like a dream. It was all so surreal. I had done something that many have yearned to do for years, although it was never a dream of any sort of mine. I had beaten Jack Passion in a beard contest.
I did feel sorry for Jack. He has an awesome beard indeed.
Bill
Hi Bill,
Well done to you and beating the legend that is Jack Passion. Perhaps with the judges it's just not the longest beard and you have a great beard.
Perhaps you should come and join jack and us over at the worlds in Trondheim in Norway next year.
You should venture up to Bend in OR weekend for US nationals.
Cheers,
John.B
Hi Johnny and Bill,
Yes, of course, Bill and Larry will be our guests next weekend at the Nationals here in Bend. It will be awe-inspiring to have PROVEN winners in our house, but I too, am glad to be a contestant with them at the USA championships here. It will be a fun meet up, and what is really fun is to have fellow Longhairs in competition with these young ones who have virtually NO head hair!!! No wonder Bill won, hands down.
Jack is awesome, but having head hair would complete the picture, and Bill wins in that category, besides just being a "cool guy".
Congrats to Bill, and we are "waiting" for him up here in Bend, but glad to have a fellow longhair in our house!!
-Daniel
Darn
I believe Bend is quite a number of hundred miles from Portland. (Never been there.) My Sister and Brother in law are due to arrive Sunday and will be staying for 10 days. Otherwise I would have made the trip and at long last met Bill, Larry and yourself in person, and what an honor that would be! :-)
Justin~
Hi Justin,
Bend is like 3.5 hours from Portland, maybe 125 miles over the mountains. The "traffic jam" this weekend for the Memorial Day holiday for people coming from Washington, California and Idaho was sizable. Bend is in the center of the state, due east of Eugene and Newport on the coast.
We are hoping to see lots of big beards, but I am hoping to see some long hair as well!
-Dan
Oh I see all the lemmings are out for the start of "offical" summer then lol! If it were me I'd drive that distance and I'm sure it will be a good weekend. :-)
.......and to think, I have never been there. :-(
So much hiking, running, exploring and all kinds of neat things to do.
Well I do agree that you have a very spiffy beard! Congratulations.
Well apart from the mong picture...I got a while to catch Jack and you up :-)
Congratulations Bill! Maybe the crowd just wanted another champion for a change instead of having Jack Passion win all the contests all the time. Plus maybe they judge not only the beards but the personalities behind them as they do in Miss World Beauty contests. I'm very happy for you Bill. I am on my 6 months of beard growth now. It's great to have a beard to help keep insulated in Winter and less sunburn in Summer. Plus not having to look at your own ugly mug each day in the mirror in the daily shaving ritual.
Duncan
Yeah, I'd much rather look at lots of hair. You mentioned beauty contests - yeah, it had a mild flavor of that, but I didn't have to sing and dance. Or prance. And I got to keep all my clothes on!
Bill
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Hopefully they gave you some kind of trophy or plaque or something. Jack Passion has an awesome beard, and I would like to meet him some day. I heard he lives in Santa Cruz.
Scott
I got a small duffel bag, a T-shirt, and a union suit, all with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer logos on it. They were the sponsor. I also got a bronze medal about the size of a silver dollar and on a red, white, and blue ribbon, hung around my neck. The medal was not very visible because it rested behind my beard. Everything was at the "gag gift" level, but that was the tone of the event, so it fit just fine. What was cool afterwards was that so many of the people there wanted to have their picture taken with me. The whole thing was a hoot - lots of fun.
I had never met anyone in that crowd before and no one knew me or vice versa. In some ways it's fun once in a while to jump into a social situation with a totally clean slate. You have no preconceived notions about anyone, and everyone you meet is an experience that is fresh and new. You can just let yourself slide into the mindset of the crowd, and drop into the midst of it. We were having a great time before I won the contest, and of course, that made it even better!
Bill
That sound very awesome and even more so because you didn't knew you would enter the contest.
What a cool event. They don't have anything like this back in my hometown. Congrats!
"...When I won, I was blown away..."
Congratulations !!!
Wow Bill, That's great! Must admit, you do have an awesome beard!
peace, jonalbear
That's really cool Bill! Congrats and I'm glad it was such a fun event.
Hi Bill,
That is totally awesome, and congratulations on your win!
Keep everything growing,
David
Wow, Bill, you took down Jack Passion in a follicular contest!? Congratulations! Jack is probably over a sink somewhere trying to bleach his beard white:) One of these days, there will be a beard contest somewhere near Phoenix so I can break out my goatee 'n chops.
Hey Bill,
That had to be a big surprise.I'm sure you didn't expect that when you went into the place.The whole thing sounds cool the way it unfolded.I think you are ready for the big time now.There must be an American Idol for breads and hair and if not there should be:)Have a great Memorial weekend and say "HI" to Larry for me.
Mark
Great job Bill! I'm a big fan of long white beards so I would have definitely voted for you.
That's awesome Bill! Jack certainly has quite the beard, its pretty amazing you were able to beat him.
Congratulations on winning!
Congratulations, Bill. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy!
What a lot of fun Bill!
Congrats!
- Oren
You once said I should get in touch with my beard side, and I went there to stick one toe in the water. I got yanked into the deep end!
One reason I went was to get a feel for the beard culture before heading off to Bend. It is quite different from longhair culture, but I saw it can be fun.
I can't imagine longhairs having a contest like that. About ten years ago someone suggested it on one longhair mail list, and he was almost hooted off the Internet. One guy summed up the collective feeling in four words, "No friggin' pageants, man."
Some people asked me before this past week if I would enter the contest in Bend. At the time I said no, and joked that I've never been a sash queen. Now I figure some people might really care whether I enter it or not, and I don't want to let anyone down, so I'm going to enter.
Another difference with the the beard crowd is that they are very much into beer. The event was sponsored by a beer company, and one of the draws of Bend is that it has lots of breweries. By the end of the weekend, I wonder how many of them will not know whether they are talking about beards or beer, and it may not matter since lots of the beards there by then might be soaked in beer.
Hey, I have a white beard, and in it no one will see beer!
Bill
Well Bill, there you are in the deep end - Swimming with the "big fish" of beard contests.
Yes - beer and beards are synonymous at these events!
Victor Engel and I went to a contest in Austin, on February 19th (which was also my birthday) and had a great time.
http://www.mlhh.org/archive/?269500
Victor took 2nd and I took 3rd place in the "Gnarliest Beard" category.
- Oren
And what awesome beards you both have!
Every one of these contests I suspect is different. The one I was in did not have a "gnarliest beard" category. It had mustaches, partial beards, and full beards. It also had a fourth category for fake facial hair, which was for women. When I saw that, I realized the event was a lot more about having a good time than about seriousness, which was to my liking. Some of the women's "beards" were obviously fake, but some had very believable-looking mustaches!
In our contest, the judges picked three or four finalists from each category, and then the crowd hooted and hollered for their favorite. No one knows "why" a certain person wins, of course, since each patron there has his or her own reasons for deciding who to holler for. I say "his or her" because about half the people there were women.
They did my category, full beards, last, and if any category was taken the most serious, that was it. A video crew from a TV channel interviewed me afterwards. Lots of people wanted to get their picture taken with me, and I got to throw my arms around enough twenty-something girls to make any straight man green with envy!
Bill
Thanks Bill,
There were quite a lot of women (and similar photo ops) at the Austin event, too.
Beats sh@ving
- Oren
Thanks to all for your comments on Bill's Great Beard Adventure!
Bill
WOW!!!!!!!
Sorry I'm so late in replying, Bill; but I haven't even had time to lurk here in the past 2 weeks or so... In any case, a big CONGRATS to you!!!!
Hope you & Larry are having a good trip up to Bend right now -- and you should enter the beard contest up there, too!!
Long Lox & Long Beards 4ever,
Ken