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Full grown men with full grown facial hair came far and wide--from Florida to Eugene to from down the stree--to participate in the first annual West Coast Beard and Mustache Competition Sunday at Portland's Crystal Ballroom. Dudes donning greased-up goatees and flowing chin hair worthy of Rumpelstiltskin all lumbered on stage like a bunch of bloated beauty queens after a bar crawl. They wore flair to accompany their hair–a man dressed as Honest Abe fooled me, a dude in a gnome hat with a portable grass patch, a gun totin' Texan and a guy wearing a tee that read "this is my beer drinking shirt" all competed against each other in six different categories including "Freestyle Mustache" and "Partial Beard."
The goal? One of the event's organizers, Portland's Stumptown Stache and Beard Collective, says it's to "to dominate [both] the National and World Beard and Mustache Championships and to rage til we drop!" According to SSBC's Justin Cate, the Portland competition was not affiliated with either the National or World events (the World event is in Norway this May), but many of the participants will be traveling to compete in both of those competitions as well. As for last Sunday's beard bash: People won, people lost and there was more hair than people. It was kind of gross.
Here's a full list of winners—congrats to home state facial hero Paul De Leone, who won for his "natural mustache" as well as all the other Top 3 winners from Oregon.
WWeek 2015