Wondermark

Beard Championships: Day 3

June 29, 2023May 22, 2009

From official Wondermark correspondent Pat Race, at the World Beard & Moustache Championships in Anchorage:

Thursday, May 21

Today is a down day, the calm before the beard storm. We picked up our press passes and wandered around town meeting moustaches and locals. In Alaska it’s hard to tell who is here to compete and who just trekked out of the woods to pick up some eggs and butter.

Lunch at Falafel King left bellies and beards filled with hummus and then it was off to Value Village to assemble the rest of Aaron’s outfit. Aaron [pictured above] is competing in the new Alaskan Whaler category and we found some good galoshes, wool pants, and suspenders to fill out his nautical look.

Judging is based on several factors – length, color, body, and hair style all factor into the decision and costumes, while not required, are a good way to frame and give context to the facial hair.

Judges this year include local hair experts, former beard champions, celebrity dog mushers, and past judges of local competitions.

It should be noted that the World Beard & Moustache championships are the largest and most renowned facial-hair competition, but just a few months ago, New York City also hosted its own Beard & Moustache Championships in Brooklyn, with amazing winners and even a video contest. Many of the competitors from the NYCBMC are have made their way to Anchorage as well, as members of Beard Team USA.

Beard Team USA is a national organization founded to promote the appreciation of beards and moustaches, and also to develop Team USA into a national bearded force that can be competitive with such international juggernauts as the Germans, the founders of the World Championships. In addition to coordinating national efforts (such as assembling Championship teams), Beard Team USA also maintains a list of regional chapters where beard enthusiasts gather around the country. My local group, The Bristly Chaps of Los Angeles, are even working on a documentary! Here’s the trailer.

We leave you today with proud portraits of some of the fine members of Beard Team USA!

GO TEAM GO

Beard Championships: Days 1 & 2

June 29, 2023May 21, 2009

Trip notes from official Wondermark World Beard & Moustache Championships correspondent Pat Race! His crew is also blogging and posting audio interviews at akrobotics.com. (All these photos are theirs.)

Tuesday, May 19

We arrived in Anchorage today, an unimpressive clump of concrete dwarfed by vast and beautiful surroundings. This year, Anchorage will host the World Beard and Moustache Championships, an event which takes place every other year and has been primarily rooted in European countries.

We spent our day wandering around lost until we found a man with a brown 70’s van and a long beard. He led us down an industrial back road to the Midnight Sun Brewery where we met up with several competitors, organizers, and beard fans from all parts of the world. A rising enthusiasm surrounds everyone.

Wednesday, May 20

Today a large contingent of American competitors arrived after cruising up through the inside passage of Southeast Alaska, the Germans rolled in yesterday and independent travelers from all over the world have been arriving by every means of transportation imaginable. Except hot air balloon, which is a slight disappointment. I’m still hoping for a man with a grand moustache to alight.

The World Beard and Moustache Championships kicked off in the late afternoon with a barbecue in Kincaid Park — an odd series of fields surrounded by remnants of cold war era ground-to-air missile bunkers. Hundreds of grinning bearded and mustachioed gentlemen packed the event with their friends, families, agents, stylists and associates in tow. I counted seven film crews from as many cities and this was just the informal barbecue.

More to come! And do check out Pat’s blog for more photos and great audio clips.

Reporting LIVE from the World Beard & Moustache Championships

June 29, 2023May 21, 2009

Fine Marksman Pat Race (above left) is attending this year’s World Beard & Moustache Championships in Anchorage, Alaska! Pat’s shooting documentary footage, which I will be thrilled to see, but in the meantime he’s posting photos and audio clips on his blog. The audio stuff is really amazing, be sure to take the time to listen!

Below is Aaron, a member of his docu crew and participant in the “Alaskan Whaler” category:

YESSSS

Just added: June 17 book signing in Beverly Hills!

June 29, 2023May 19, 2009

faaancy

Mark your calendar! I’ll be bringing books, sketch paper and high-fives to the official Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death release party at the awesome Crescent Hotel in Beverly Hills. What better way to launch a book that no less an authority than Publishers Weekly called “mordant but must-have“?

The Crescent has an amazing indoor/outdoor lounge bar with double-sided fireplaces, massive leather couches, and a full-service bar and restaurant. We’ll be there from 7-10 PM, and I’ll be doing free sketches in all my books! It’ll be my only Los Angeles appearance this summer, and perhaps all year.

This is the first time I’ve held an event like this and I can’t wait to meet everybody who lives in my very own li’l town. Finally, an event in Los Angeles for the locals! Come out, introduce yourself, and represent.

I’ll post another reminder closer to the date, but mark your calendar now for Wednesday, June 17!

Check out: Thomas Bewick

June 29, 2023May 18, 2009

Thomas Bewick was an English woodcut artist from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Examples of his work are currently showing at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK until May 25th. The Guardian‘s writeup on the show explains his work thusly:

By the late 18th century, the woodblock was the poor relation to steel or copper engravings. Bewick brought the medium back to life, at the end of each long day’s work printing money for the Bank of Northumberland. He also found time to produce an enormously popular General History of Quadrupeds, as well as a two-volume History of British Birds, in which these Tale-pieces originally appeared (their name is a play on the fact that they are tail-pieces, decorative squibs designed to fill up space at the end of a text).

There is enormous pleasure in these tiny images, sketched on paper then transferred to a bit of Turkish box-wood, which Bewick then engraved, using little tools he mostly made himself. He imagined image after image, right up until the day he died in 1828. It is surprising he kept his sight. Sometimes he even drew on his thumbnail, licking the images off with his tongue when he wanted to draw another. He would have made a wonderful animator.

Bewick’s work was also the subject of the 2007 book Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick, and the New York Times review of the book elaborates:

Bewick’s first masterpiece, “A General History of Quadrupeds,” appeared in 1790, when the study of natural history began to be fashionable. There were no field guides of the sort we take for granted; the world of collectors was unconnected and the discipline of classification nascent. In preparation, Bewick spent nine years studying anything he could get his hands on. He collected illustrations made by artists who accompanied explorers into the wild; he visited touring menageries and borrowed items from private collections of taxidermy.

To prepare for his second masterpiece, “A History of British Birds,” Bewick sent out word that he needed specimens, and the northern gentry pitched in with enthusiasm. Crates began to arrive, full of birds either clawing for release or long dead, putrid and crawling with maggots. Bewick carefully examined them, then carved his miniature drawings into blocks of boxwood, sliced from logs sent up from London.

The online Bewick Society also features a wonderful collection of Bewick woodcuts, as well as information about the actual drawing and woodcutting process, which I find fascinating.

Thanks very much to Marksman Ed S. for sending along the info about the gallery show, which led to my discovering all the rest!

#1574; In which the Audience participates (Part 1)

— October 19th, 2025