Hundreds of contestants descend on Pennsylvania’s Amish Country to fight for fascial-hair dominance in one of the nation’s top beard competitions.
Cheeky Bastards
“I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen. Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.” Emcee Jack Passion offers up these words of consolation on a sunny October afternoon in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It’s 4:20 P.M. and an Afro-bearded Neanderthal of a man has rushed the stage without warning, wearing a red jumpsuit that resembles both an Oriental rug and a terry-cloth robe. The roustabout is undulating his bear-size body and shouting unintelligible inanities.
An amused audience member in the stadium’s second-floor skybox says, “Man, that guy is totally tripping balls. Awesome.”
Passion (yes, it’s a stage name) is not as thrilled. It’s the 27-year-old’s responsibility as emcee to keep the day’s festivities moving. As a police officer makes his way to the stage, Passion admits, “You never know what you’re going to see at a beard competition. I’m pretty down with anything. But if you grab my beard when you try to grab the mike …” He shakes his head, swaying the 24 inches of auburn locks beneath his chin.
The crowd moans in mock horror.
A few minutes later, the behemoth is led away by the officer. “I’m so sorry about that,” says Passion.
“Shall we continue with the beard competition?”
That’s right — beard competition. It’s October 8, 2011, and the city often known for its own bearded Amish fellas has been invaded by hordes of mutton-chopped and mustachioed out-of-towners for the 2011 National Beard and Mustache Championships. Competitors hailing from 35 states — as well as Germany, Canada, and New Zealand — are jockeying for facial-hair dominance and cash prizes in five divisions: Mustache, Partial Beard, Full Beard Groomed, Full Beard Natural, and Freestyle.
Following a press conference at the Marriott that introduced the day’s judges — former Pittsburgh Steeler Justin Hartwig, Miss Pennsylvania Juliann Sheldon, United States National Rugby Team member Phil Thiel, Dutch land Derby Roller Jen Bricker, and World Beard and Mustache Freestyle champion Willi Chevalier — organizer Phil Olsen is walking behind a giant banner promoting the upcoming throw down. The brown-bearded 62-year-old, who’s wearing calfskin lederhosen with a button-down coat, is surrounded by a parade of men with pointy mustaches and sideburns that poof out proudly. To his right, 38-year-old Keith “Gandhi Jones” Haubrich of Seattle is bugging out his eyes and pursing his lips in hopes of shocking passers-by with the whale shape he’s created on his upper lip. The 30-minute walk — during which someone yells, “Grow a beard or you hate America!” — ends at Clipper Magazine Stadium. Normally home to the minor-league Lancaster Barnstormers, the stadium will temporarily house a quite different event.
“I’ve been very dedicated to making it bigger, better, more inclusive,” Olsen explains. After stumbling upon the World Beard and Mustache Championships while vacationing in Ystad, Sweden, in 1999, the Lake Tahoe, California, resident was determined to bring beard competitions to his own country. He founded Beard Team USA and began organizing contests in 2003, helping to establish local chapters whenever he could (there are more than 50 today). Over the past few years, beard competitions have garnered a lot more attention, he says, with coverage ranging from Sports Illustrated to The Times of India. Olsen and Passion are among the personalities in the Independent Film Channel’s summer reality series Whisker Wars.
“Everybody who is interested should be welcomed,” Olsen continues. “There are others who don’t share my vision. There’s a lot of fighting, which I think is completely unnecessary. Some people think an event like this should not be held in a stadium because they feel it should be a smaller, more intimate — exclusive — event for themselves. I have been firmly committed from the beginning in trying to maximize participation in all ways.”
It seems he’s succeeded. There are more than 200 competitors and some 2,000 attendees streaming into the stadium. Ask any bearded guy how he found out about the contest, and he’ll most likely answer like Anthony J. Francolino of Erial, New Jersey. “I was looking online for ways to show my beard off, and I found Beard Team USA,” says the 34-year-old president of the Tri-State Beard and Mustache Club. “I contacted Phil and said, ‘What do I gotta do to get on the team?’ And he’s like, ‘Would you like to open up a local chapter?’”
It’s 1:15 P.M. when Passion — himself a two-time Beard Full Natural world champion — takes to the stage to get things rolling. The Mustache category is up first, with 33 contenders. Contestants line up in groups of 10 to 12, and the top three selected by the judges advance to the finals. Passion quickly runs through what qualifies as a mustache, and it soon becomes clear that while this event is whimsical, it’s still somewhat serious.
An excerpt from the judging criteria: “The mustache is the hair that grows on the upper lip, but can also include hairs growing from elsewhere on the face that are a natural extension of the shape of the mustache. Therefore Fu Manchus, walruses, and horseshoe styles are all considered mustaches.”
Once he’s finished reading the rules, Passion gestures to the men behind him. “Ladies and gentlemen, our first competitor, Patrick Gorman.”
A guy in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a bow tie strolls to the front of the stage and smiles at the judges. He could be just about anybody’s uncle, dad, or coworker, save for one distinguishing feature: his bushy, dirty-blonde mustache that proudly curls up at its ends. Minutes later, baby-faced Jacksonville, Florida, resident Sam Holcombe draws gasps from the audience when he tugs on the wiry curls above his lip to unwind them into long strands, five inches from each side of his face.
As the whiskered pageantry continues, the second-floor skybox is teeming with contestants milling around and catching up. Many of the men know one another from previous beard events; some grumble that there’s only one free keg of beer. Those aren’t the only ill words, however. Hang around long enough and you’ll learn of a little controversy beneath some friendly looking furry facades.
Just sit next to the boys of the Austin Facial Hair Club, also featured in Whisker Wars. Unlike most of the participants here, this independent club of 20-plus members is not part of Beard Team USA. “We don’t want to be associated with the way Phil runs stuff,” says 34-year-old Partial Beard competitor (and 2011 finalist) Mike Schrader. “He is for-profit…. I’m not strictly for charity, but our T-shirts and stuff get more club members to go to stuff like this.”
“I’m here to have fun and show off my beard. I’ve put a lot of care and hard work into it. If I can find people who appreciate it, that’s awesome.”
So why come?
“We don’t want to be the kids acting like ‘I’m taking my ball and going over here,’” he explains.
“We’ll compete in stuff like this. We just want there to be transparency behind it. He’s making money. Take my $40. When you register for this contest, you get an email receipt that says, ‘$40 paid to the order of Phil Olsen.’ It’s kind of ridiculous.”
The tension between the two groups is palpable at times. On seeing AFHC president Bryan Nelson, Passion confronts him, asking why he’s come. Afterward, Nelson, a 39-year-old with a full red beard, says, “Phil started what I thought was a fake rivalry a couple of years ago, before the world championships in Alaska. He called me up and said, ‘Hey, we’re trying to get some press. It would help if you and Jack were like rivals. We’ll play it up that the Texas team is gonna come.’ I said, ‘Okay, as long as Jack’s cool with it.’ I kind of get the impression that Jack never knew it was fake.”
As for Passion, he doesn’t deny the exchange, but defends it. “They talk trash about Beard Team USA and then show up at the events, you know? I legitimately asked, ‘Why are you here? If you don’t want to be part of this, why do you continue to be part of it?’ It’s a legitimate question.”
Despite this, the angst roiling beneath the surface is hard to detect unless you actively look for it. (Although watching Passion ask Nelson what it’s like to place second in Full Beard Natural makes for good people-watching.)
By eight o’clock, winners have been announced, and all misgivings seem to have been laid aside in favor of a jubilant celebration of beard-dom. Olsen reveals to triumphant cheers that the next nationals will take place in Las Vegas on November 11, 2012.
Patrick Gorman takes home the Mustache title; Toot Joslin of Tahoe City, California, wins Partial Beard; John Myatt of Los Angeles has Full Beard Groomed; and John Burgess of Martinsburg, West Virginia, wins Full Beard Natural. As for the freestyle competition, this is the category in which creative ingenuity reigns supreme. Twenty-nine-year-old Jonathan Rice of Plantation, Florida, was up against Haubrich’s waxy-whale mustache, and guys like Brian Que in, aka the “Electric Starfish,” who styled his beard into four points and embedded an electric zapper in the bristles beneath his chin. Yet Rice’s loops — which he says took hours to create using two-liter soda bottles and hair spray — landed him the national Freestyle title. Each first-place winner gets $600 in prize money, a plaque, and swag from sponsors Panasonic, Bluebeard, and Vita Beard.
“I’m honestly here to have fun and show off my beard,” Rice says. “I’ve put a lot of care and hard work into it. If I can find people who appreciate it, that’s awesome.”
Now those possessing reptilian knowledge will recognize this last photograph as that of the Bearded Dragon, which might make an interesting story in and of itself. More on topic here, and presumably even more interesting would be a look at a modern merkin manufacturer, so if anyone knows one of those, let us know. We’d love to do a profile on that for sure. Despite what might be the most common reaction to the merkin idea today, they can in fact be quite fun and lead to a nice little spice to an “adult event” in your future.
As a bit of a beard finale here, we should mention that this article could easily have come from an author where “cheeky bastards” might appear more often in the local lexicon. Of course we do appreciate a good pun — well, in honesty, some of us do — so we left the article title the same as in the magazine. Of course our web title took advantage of the very rare and valuable homonym pun, which is pretty much like a straight flush in poker, y’know. … Should you care about none of that, you might care that there are actual websites about these beard contests that you can visit. That will distract you fairly quickly, we’re betting. … If you contact anyone there, ask them if ZZ Top serves as the permanent entertainment for the event.
