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Bacon Party World Tour:  New York City & San Francisco

9/26/04

First in a series

As the Bacon Party approaches its three-year anniversary, I came up with a novel idea:  take the love of the Bacon Party on the road, visiting friends wherever I know somebody, and eat brunch with people all over the great U.S. of A., and the world, should I find a place where I can make bacon and waffles outside domestic lines.

We're still working on the "world" part, but for now, the "bacon party" part is not going to be a problem.  I've got a few more stops to make in the next two months, but for now, I have gotten two major cities out of the way:  New York City and San Francisco.  Read on for the notes on the first two parties.

9/11/04:  New York City

Sometime in August I called up my friend Lex (Lex's full name is "Alexis", but I don't think I have ever used all six of those letters to refer to her), and as usual, I got her voice mail.  But, I left her a message that drew one of the two phone calls I usually get from her all year:

"I'm coming to town to see you!  Let me know when you'll be around...I'm thinking about doing a Bacon Party up in your neck of the woods."

Lex called back, and over the next couple of weeks we plotted out details for the party.  Although I know Lex to be fairly lazy in some respects (this IS the girl that told me you can order French toast as a delivery item), when it comes down to something that she cares about, she can be as aggressive as anyone I have ever met, be it planning vacations with her friends, mining the website J-Date for prospective singles or...hosting a Bacon Party.  Knowing this, Lex was pretty hands-on with details for this party, and it turned out quite well, although all I hoped for in putting the New York party together was that it wouldn't kill Lex in terms of stress level.

The day of the actual party was everything you ever dreamed of...assuming you dream about bacon parties:  the waft of pork in the air, a waft so strong that you could smell the stuff half a block away...people eating bacon and, after being offered a seventh or eighth slice of bacon, those same people trying to beg off, like they didn't realize that the main point of Bacon Party is to eat bacon for three hours...the people laid out on the couch after it was all over, unable to breathe or--worse--fathom what they have just done to their innards' long-term health.

Who doesn't love this shit???

Highlights from New York:

1.  My friends Melinda and Sal--one of whom is pregnant--made a 90-minute drive from the New York suburbs to get to the party in Union Square, making them the couple most willing to do whatever it takes to eat bacon in the BP's short history.  When they arrived, Melinda told us this sob story about how much Sal missed Bacon Parties (they left the DC area a couple years ago), so making bacon for Sal was made that much sweeter for me.  Dammit, here come the ManTears again...

2.  There was this magical moment when Lex's friend Ally was cooking bacon in the kitchen, and while all of us were eating/talking in the living room, she yelled out to no one in particular

"Hey, could someone turn it to the Wisconsin game to get me a score?"

so that she could see if her alma mater was winning a college football matchup on this fine Saturday.  The other men seemed to recognize this, and the men in attendance all shared one of those looks that says

"She's hot and she wants college football updates?  Is that girl married?"

3.  For maybe the first time in the history of Bacon Party, the champagne-to-orange-juice ratio was perfect; mimosas were served throughout the BP and into the early afternoon, when Lex, Ally, Alexandra "Silky" Sorota and I drank and hung out for about six hours after the party was over, chilling out and talking about nearly EVERYTHING over the course of the afternoon.  Man, I couldn't even keep up with it all...although, I do remember that I can't repeat most of it here for this edition of the column.  Also, Ally and I had another moment when we found the "Band of Brothers" marathon on the History Channel; it was cool talking with someone that loved this series as much as I did, because I still think this is my favorite TV miniseries of all time, just outpacing "Roots", "Lonesome Dove" and "V."  (Yes..."V.")

4.  Stefan "Stefdog" Prelog and his roommate showed up with biscuits and gravy from Popeye's, which was pure genius, especially when we were making bacon biscuits with gravy near the end of the BP; man, I could feel a nap coming on with each bite of those lovely morsels.  So beautiful...so beautiful.

5.  Although Brian "Hummer of Doom" Prenoveau's fiancée Lucie claimed that she "doesn't eat bacon", she had about five slices of the good pork before settling into an easy chair.  This marks the fifth time where someone claimed that they do not eat pork but ate pork (and photo documentation of said event) at a BP.  The smell of bacon is just so beautiful, isn't it???

6.  My friend Tina came along with her boyfriend and another friend that, in a shocking move, brought along bacon recipes for me to use at a later date.  I was flabbergasted; has anyone ever shown such love for a person that they did not previously know?  Okay, you are right, I haven't used them, but just the thought alone was just so damned sexy!

Rumor has it that another NYC BP will take place sometime in the fall...and, since Greyhound is giving away roundtrip bus tix for $45, daddy will be up there again sooner or later...

---

9/18/04:  San Francisco

My buddy Storm couldn't use the free flight I gave to him for a wedding gift on jetBlue, so I had to use it before it expired and I blew it on a trip to San Francisco to see the old crew...and, of course, to do a West Coast BP.  It was that kind of weekend in San Francisco; I showed up to get some face time with many of the people I used to run the streets with, most notably Brett "Cracka" Stone, Andy "Long Dong" Kellam, and Max "Flicks" Messier.  I was lucky to be able to see a few other folks as well; my roomie Wes, "Melissa" Kern, my friend Cass, that crazed Englishman Toby, Eza...the list runs on and on.

But, it's the stuff you don't plan on that makes things the most fun, and in this respect, it was pretty cool hangin' out with a guy I know through Brett and Andy, Raleigh "I'm Just One Man" Harbour.  As others did their own things on Friday night pre-BP, Raleigh and I went out to get drinks at a bar around the corner from Brett's place to hang out.  We made some interesting decisions.

1. Beef jerky is "the perfect food."  Personally, I think that bacon is the perfect food, but I will admit that Rawls did a good job of selling me on why beef jerky may have the edge, even if it tastes like dogshit to me.  It is the perfect travel food, it is cheap, it is low in bad things for your body and high in good things for your body, it can keep for literally years, it is made of meat products...the list goes on and on.  But, when you listen to Rawls tell it, really, the shit is quite funny.

2. White people dancing to hip-hop at yuppie bars is amongst the funniest shit of all time.  You don't look at Thurston and his girlfriend Chastity--dudded out in their finest Abercrombie/Ann Taylor combinations--and think "Man, those guys must be HUGE Ludacris fans!"  But, when you watch them throw down to any current hip-hop song, you can't help but fall in love with the passion for the booty shake all over again.

3. Earlier in the evening, we really had seen The Perfect Ass.  And, it was important that we spent much of the next couple of hours at this bar talking about how perfect it was, and where it ranked in the Ass Hall of Fame.

Rawls and I were at an art gallery opening for Brett's girlfriend Vanessa, and while there, a friend of Vanessa's was just leaving the party when Rawls and I caught sight of the befuddlingishly-beautiful backside of this bodacious bonita.  The thing that made it so stunning was that she was wearing white pants that seemed to be carved in a shape that would perfectly encapsulate the previously-mentioned bootay; the pants weren't too tight, but there was not a single piece of airspace available to escape the wrath of this girl's curves.  At the time--and even now, in reflection--I still think this girl may have had the best ass of any woman I had ever seen in person.

This was verified by Raleigh and others, including Vanessa, who addressed it by saying something along the lines of "Yeah, I know...she gets that a lot."  So, Raleigh and I spent most of the rest of that night looking at other sights at this bar to see if anything measured up...and, naturally, nothing did.

The next day, we did up Bacon Party.  The highlights:

1.  Chip Hudgins--"Cueball" to some, "The RZA" to others--showed up at San Francisco BP with a beautiful woman in one arm and a pound of absolutely slammin' bacon in the other, which was of course a pound from the Bacon of the Month Club, which once again, IS REAL.  This pound was so salty that you almost had to taste it to believe it...so, I did, about four times.  This may have been the saltiest bacon I have ever tasted, which you know is significant if I'm saying that and we're talkin' bout bacon!

2.  This party was a nine-pounder; I'm pretty sure that Rawls and I did two of the nine pounds by ourselves.  4.5 pounds of the stuff was that peppered bacon that comes in the pound-and-a-half serving size; every time another batch of that stuff came out, it was like hounds at a flesh party...I have seen so much in my time doing BPs, but damn, otherwise sane people diving in for this peppered bacon made me think this Bacon Party thing might have some legs after all.

3.  John Ayers, a man that showed up at a BP last year in SF wasted (at, oh, 10:30 AM), came back in style this time around, arriving with respectable meat products--none of that thin Oscar Meyer bullshit--and his wife Tiffany, a woman that is stronger than words will ever convey.  Tiffany also took time to take issue with an earlier Bellview essay about weddings (Potpourri X: Call Me Old School...), which is always great, because nothing beats a good ol' fashioned tongue lashing in person!

4.  Continuing what we started in New York, the mimosa train was running at full steam in San Francisco, and after my fifth or sixth one, I actually took my nap while guests were still in attendance.  This was also the longest nap I took all year...literally three hours and fifteen minutes long.  Damn, that BP nap is hot!

5.  Wes "The Hammer" Shaw, Irish as all get out, actually did take a hot slice of bacon and swirl it in a full pot of previously-cooked-in bacon grease before eating it.  May have been the highlight of the party...yes, Wes is still alive.  Hey, you gotta take risks in life, right??

6.  The world-famous Brett Stone eggs-and-ham platter was served halfway through the party; I really don't know why I never cooked my eggs with Virginia ham growing up, but now, I almost can't eat my eggs without it.  Throw in some cheese, black pepper and a shot of hot sauce, and damn, skippy!  I can almost taste it now.

Hungry?  I sure am...

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

• Watching one girl smell another girl's hair to make sure "the bacon smell got out":  Opening Weekend

• "STW"--Stop Talking, Woman!:  $9.50 Show

• Voting against Bush or against Kerry:  Matinee

• Palm Pilots:  Rental

• Brigitte Nielsen and Flavor Flav coupling on "The Surreal Life":  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com