bobafred

This past weekend we attended the 2007 Whiskerino Throwdown in Nashville, Tennessee. In short, it was awesome.

In not short, it was:

Friday night was a Whiskerino art show at a local gallery. We picked up a small painting by hale! ryan! for the man room at home. I can’t wait to hang all the beard art I’ve bought throughout this thing. After that, 50 or so of the beards headed over to a local bar for some additional conversations+drinks. It was really fun to see the reactions of the people that were already at the bar when that many dudes with beards showed up. The looks on their faces were classic and almost worth the four hour drive to Nashville alone!

Saturday day was an entire bowling alley of beards bowling. We were able to get the lanes all to ourselves for 2 hours, which was pretty awesome. Here is all 132 of us, plus whatever additional others were there.

Saturday night was fancy dinner and then a rock show consisting of Codaphonic, Yea Big + Kid Static and The Protomen. Lori and I saw Codaphonic a few weeks ago here in Atlanta, and it’s nice to see that they are consistently excellent live. Band members and Whiskerino participants Cody! and tao jones are also super nice guys. Next up was Yea Big + Kid Static. They pretty much ruled. Their mix of hip hop with high energy and story telling really was awesome to see live. The final band was The Protomen. We only stayed for one of their songs, though, as it was getting late and we had a long drive ahead of us in the morning so all I can really say is that they were loud and face painted. Both of which is ok by me.

Obviously the best part of the weekend was meeting and hanging out with all the participants. Every single person we met was great to talk to. And, that’s what the Whiskerino is really all about. Sure we all grew beards, but the social aspect of it is what we’ll remember most at the end. It really was a great weekend.

So, will I participate in Whiskerino 2009? Right now, I’d say yes. It’ll probably depend on what’s going on at that point, but I’ve had so much fun, that I’d love to do it again.

Many thanks to Mackle and everyone else involved in putting this thing together.

Here are my photos from the weekend.
Here are a bunch more from others.

Tags: beards, bowling, codaphonic, kid static, nashville, protomen, throwdown, Whiskerino, yea big

My yearly Chicago trip to visit Adam and Melissa happened this past weekend. Here’s what went down:

Lori and I started the weekend off right with drinks and people watching at an airport bar. This is fun because we both like drinks and talking shit about strangers at the airport. Adam and Melissa picked us up at Midway and we headed out for dinner. After a few places being too crowded, we ended up at a Cuban place that was really good. There are a fair amount of restaurants in Chicago that are BYOB, which is awesome because when you get the check for 4 people and it only has food on it, it’s pretty cheap. Of course, we didn’t BYOR(um), so that was less awesome. Anyway, after dinner we headed to their new condo for more alcohol and post-dinner conversations.

Saturday day we woke up not early and went out for brunch. I had pumpkin flavored french toast, which doesn’t really sound good now that I read that, but it was. A little on the sweet side, but I’m ok with that. Afterwards we made the yearly trip to the Puma store where I picked up some new Frankenclydes. We did various other shoppings and walkings. Soon we headed back to the condo to get ready for dinner with Jeff and Jen, who are both awesome. There was food and talking and drinks and laughs. It was fun catching up with everyone.

Sunday Melissa woke up, went the grocery store, came back, and made a pot roast. Just like that, completely unplanned. It was delicious and a great way to fill our bellies before heading to the airport and back to Atlanta.

It was a fun, lazy weekend trip — just how I had hoped it would be. Thanks to Adam and Melissa for everything and to Jeff and Jen for first suggesting Tomboy for dinner and then picking up the very expensive dinner tab.

Here be photos.

Lori and I took a few days off to head down to Miami Beach. It was fun. Originally the trip was planned by Dave and Lori, and I attached myself to their plans, but Dave had to cancel at the last minute because of things. We missed him and his love of frozen drinks very much.

My main goal for the trip was to relax, which we completely accomplished. Aside from a fancy dinner one night, we didn’t really make any plans to do things before we left. The days consisted of walking around and hitting the beach. And the evenings consisted of walking around and hitting dinner. Neither of us are really clubby people, so we avoided that whole scene entirely.

Instead we found Mac’s Club Deuce, which was sort of like The Highlander. We met a nice local named Leo there that told us about the best place for dinner on 39th and Collins where, if we were lucky, we could find some free parking even though we were without a car. He told us about his first marriage and his three kids and how he met his current ‘old lady’ on a drywalling job. He also said that I should treat Lori well, which I do, because he could tell she was an amazing girl. which she is. By the end of our conversation, he told me to ‘get the fuck out of here’ and take Lori to get dinner at the nice place on 39th and Collins. It’s the first time someone has told me to ‘get the fuck out of here’ in a nice way.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a beach person, I did enjoy our beach time. And I’m not just saying that because it was a topless beach. The water was pretty cool, which felt nice after sitting in the hot sun. We managed to avoid most of the rain and get two solid beach trips in. Also, I didn’t get burned, which is awesome. Did I mention topless?

On Friday night we went to Puerto Sagua for some great Cuban food. I had the roasted chicken with black beans and rice. It was so good. I loved the atmosphere of the place. Plus, dinner for two in South Beach for $25 is a steal.

Aside from a weird stomach thing that we both seemed to share throughout the week, I had a great time. It was nice to get out of Atlanta for a few days.

Photos here.