Pork in the Park pix

Yeah, I know someone else did this but mine are different. Last year I did a little more of a narrative after the fact (and I still might), (I did) but this year I actually checked out some of the competitors and found that aspect fairly humorous, so I’ll make that my focus here.

Let’s begin with what this festival is about, though. If I’m going to something called Pork in the Park, I’m there to eat ribs. One complaint I had last year was a lack of vendors actually selling ribs and this year we have three insofar as I can tell who are not local. Here’s two of them.

The other doesn’t quite have as elaborate of a set up.

I decided for tonight to give Skin ‘n Bones my money for a half-rack. Part of the reason is what you’ll see in the second picture below.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as some of the others I recalled from last year but to each his or her own. I still have a couple to try out that aren’t local.

In terms of real time, I actually ate about in the middle of the two hours I was over there. After I walked around to find where I’ll be Sunday (more on that later) I wandered around the pond to scope out those shooting for the awards from the sponsoring Kansas City Barbeque Society.

While some may liken the barbeque circuit to NASCAR because individual entities compete in a “league” with rules and yearly stops, I think of it more like the professional bowlers’ tour because you have a subset who travels around the country from stop to stop and you have a lot of local competitors at each venue who are trying to make a name for themselves against the big guys. Most of these folks are from this region but some have traveled quite a distance. All of them are vying for a total of $17,000 in prize money but if I could give out prizes for most humorous signs here’s some that would be winners.

These folks pretty much show they have a relaxed attitude:

Cartoonists have a field day with some of the signs. This one was a favorite of mine:

Here’s another good example of that. The disclaimer was quite amusing too, hopefully you can read it in the second photo.

I seem to recall these guys came here last year so it’s nice to get the repeat business.

This Texas BBQ outfit looked like they were serious, based on the rig that brought them here.

And then you have a band of brothers, which is nice to see. I guess the family that ‘ques together…oh hell, I can’t think of a good rhyme, you do it.

Some participants do this undertaking for a higher cause:

While others know that sex sells, particularly if you want a thriving merchandising business like the bottom photo shows:

Been there, done that, didn’t get the shirt. If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s another T-shirt. Someone who would be glad to supply me one though also has a booth there, as I’ve alluded to a couple times this week. It’s where I’ll be stationed Sunday afternoon so come by and say hello as a few others did to me today as I wandered the premises.

I can’t forget the other component of this festival, and that’s the music. While it doesn’t necessarily qualify as a “Weekend of local rock” post I did catch the first of many acts to be playing this weekend, the bluesy slide guitarist and harmonica player Chris English.

Finally, I snapped a shot of the upcoming entertainment for the next couple days. Fortunately I’ll be there to see Crossroads start their show but commence my Harris booth shift at 2:00 so I’ll only catch about half.

As an aside to wrap things up for this review, last year I said that it would be good for the South Atlantic League to schedule the Shorebirds away this weekend – as chance would have it, they did. But there’s no shuttle service from the stadium like I suggested because Perdue Stadium is hosting a local dealership’s car event in their parking lot. Too bad about the missed opportunity because I’m suspecting parking will be a problem tomorrow and I wouldn’t be surprised if folks aren’t parked at the adjacent school. But we’ll see and I certainly don’t want to scare people away from a great event.

One more thing I wanted to add – most of the competitors will be outta here after the awards are given this afternoon so if you want to check things out back there my suggestion is to head over before 3:00 or so. Sunday it’ll be more about the entertainment and social aspects of the festival, hopefully the predicted rain will by and large stay away.