On Sunday, Tucson’s furriest faces will compete for local bragging rights in the first ever Arizona Beerd Fest at the Rialto Theatre.
The inaugural event has put a call out to the city’s bearded masses in the hopes of finding the best of the best when it comes to fantastic facial hair.
In a delicious twist, the festivities will also celebrate Tucson’s craft beer community with several local breweries — including Borderlands and Pueblo Vida — pouring the drinks.
Music will be provided by Sonario, The Modeens, Vox Urbana and Hey, Bucko, a string of musical acts with varying levels of follicle scruff.
Proceeds will go toward several organizations, including the No Shave November Foundation, which raises awareness for different types of cancer, The Movember Foundation which supports men’s health and the Rialto Theatre Foundation.
“There seems to be some significant interest,” said event coordinator Ronnie Spece. “People keep telling me that they’ve heard a good buzz. I know there are a large number of bearded guys in town.”
The concept for a local beard competition involving craft beer arose early on from discussions held between Spece and his creative collaborator Kade Mislinski.
Spece started growing his beard out in November of 2013. He had always had some level of facial hair, but decided to go for broke after a Halloween/Día de los Muertos event at Playground, downtown.
“I had a close goatee so I could wear skeleton makeup for the event,” he said. “I am not sure why I decided to keep it going. My mom’s side is Swedish, vikings. I guess it is in my blood to have a beard.”
The facial hair opened up a whole new world for Spece, who has since started making his own beard grooming oil and paying more attention to the beards he sees in movies and on television.
Spece notes that he is not the only one.
“There is a man named Incredibeard on Facebook who sculpts his beard into different shapes and has nearly 400,000 followers,” Spece said. “It is definitely becoming more common and more popular.”
Spece says he realizes that beards are a big thing within Tucson’s hipster community, many of whom may choose to participate in Sunday’s event, but he wants the Arizona Beerd Festival to be for anyone in town willing to show off what they’ve got.
“We even talked about Santa Claus coming for the kids, but I don’t think that is going to happen,” he said.
Contestants, who can sign up at the door, will be judged in several categories, including best full natural beard, best partial beard and best freestyle mustache.
The no-shave November category will feature contestants who signed up on Nov. 1 with no facial hair at all.
“We’ll parade them in front of the judges to see who grew the best beard in a month,” Spece said. “There is no set checklist. It could be who grew it the longest, the thickest, the craziest.”
Spece said he would like to turn the Arizona Beerd Fest into an annual thing and, in the future, make it an event that he can hold in Phoenix and Flagstaff.
“There are a lot of breweries and definitely a lot of beards up in Flagstaff,” he said.
