[Guest Post] Brooklyn Bacon Takedown

This is a guest post by the esteemed Ian F. King recounting his epic adventures at the Brooklyn Bacon Takedown in Williamsburg illustrated with some select photographs by the esteemed Sara A. Morrisson. I guess they also brought a back-up Sara just in case, which is an excellent example of being prepared. (This is why I always keep around multiple Brians and Kyles.)

“Emergency! Emergency!” squawked an unfamiliar voice on my drawing room windowsill. I spun around in my smoking chair, and there before me perched the frantic visage of Speckles, who was filling in that day for Nugget, my trusty carrier pigeon, taking over his route duties while Nugget was off on a preposterous sojourn to “find himself” along the coastlines of Andalusia, no doubt nibbling at discarded tapas every step of the way. Speckles was a reliable-enough substitute, but he lacked the social graces that Nugget so naturally displayed, being the product of the Philips Exeter Avian Academy.
“Lucifer pinch your cursed beak!” I replied, sending one of my numerous smoothed-alabaster paperweights sailing in his direction, the forcefulness of my reason immediately striking Speckles, compelling him to take a few deep breaths to calm himself before continuing on.

“Apologies good sir, but it’s Mister Laine, I’m afraid worst fortune has befallen him, and he requires your immediate help.”

“Go on…” I leaned forward.

“Well sir, he was on his way this morning to attend the Worlds Most Famous and Delightful Great Bacon Takedown in Williams’ Burgh, but whilst on his way over in his private zeppelin, he became distracted by a particularly engaging sandwich, and unfortunately his pilot mistook the name of the pub where the Takedown is held for the name of the city they were going to, so that by the time Mister Laine was able to disengage from savoring his lunch, they were already tethering down in an airfield just outside Radegast, Germany.” Speckles was all but entirely out of breath, but I knew exactly where this was going.

“So,” I exclaimed, rising briskly from my chair with a purposeful thumbing of my suspenders, “I shall then go in his stead, and see to it that no faithful Bac-Log subscriber’s screen goes unfilled with the glorious reporting of the Great Bacon Takedown that they should rightfully expect!”

“Oh Mister Laine shall be most appreciative,” Speckles said. Though the estimable Grant V. Laine has never been one with a need to bestow appreciation upon those who merely attend to their destiny, I knew that both Mr. Laine and I would ultimately rest easy knowing that he had not enjoyed that sandwich in vain. This, my handsome friends, is how I briefly came out of retirement, to fill my role as Mr. Laine’s assistant once more.

Understanding what lay before me at the World’s Most Famous and Delightful Great Bacon Takedown – upwards of nearly three dozen bacon-blessed epicurean masterpieces, and a salt-crazed mob of equally immense size and appetite – I enlisted the help of two willing companions, the conveniently twin-named Sara and Sara. “Assistant’s assistants” I called them (continually throughout the day), if you will allow me a moment of whimsical cleverness. Sara and Sara were as willing to face this challenge as I was, and the three of us made the epic, epic journey from our respective homes just outside the ancient mortared walls of Fort Greene, north as the crow flies to farthest reaches of Williams’ Burgh.

We arrived later that day weathered but un-weary from the long, long journey, only to find ourselves thrust into the teeming cavernous bowels of Radegast Beer Hall, which was swollen with the bacon-scent of promise, and a capacity crowd upwards of three hundred unruly citizens ready to ravage any and all foodstuffs put before their rapacious eyes. It was a thing of wonder, and a thing of terror.

Soon enough after we arrived, the mass began to align itself for the ceremonial dishing-out of God’s own great pork feast, and having been distracted by our attempts to get an early eyeful of the bounty that lay before us, we got a pretty shit place in line. We carried on with our spirits high however, singing rounds of traditional bacon carols with some of the fellow merry-makers, and regaling each other with tales of our fondest memories of Takedown’s past.

As Father Time ticked on and on, our feet remained mostly unmoved, and a growing sense of impatience began to chip away at the demeanor of some of us more than others. Unbeknownst to me at first, one of the Sara’s, though she might not have appeared to be an individual capable of such sinister thoughts [pictured at left], made numerous unsuccessful attempts to barter my recreational services for a more favorable position in line. When this did ultimately come to my attention (let’s not worry about exactly how it did), Sara was very forthcoming with apology, and I insisted we let bygones be bygones. This was the World’s Most Famous and Delightful Great Bacon Takedown after all, an event known to drive man and woman to the edges of reason in the quest to consume one’s heart content with the sizzled fat of nature’s fourth smartest land creature.

I’ll spare you, loyal reader, any more of the tedium that was the endless queue, because what laid at the end of the tunnel, as we all knew, was light – a blinding heavenly light ready to shoot across the dark expanse of our eager tastebuds. Once we finally arrived at the banquet tables, we were administered a small sacrament of bacon bourbon ice cream that threatened to overwhelm our palettes. If a cloud full of trumpeting angels had a taste, this would have surely been its proxy. And it was just the beginning. As Sara and Sara and I slowly wound our way through the orgasmic gauntlet, we reveled in creations like the bacon tomato soup, bacon piroshky, bacon sloppy joe, home-cured ‘electric’ bacon, and even a very odd invention described to me as a “cupped cake”, topped with a shingle of the Good Meat. On first sight, I was a little taken aback by the appearance of these bizarrely small cakes, perturbed by the faulty reasoning that must have led someone to think that you could improve a food by shrinking it. “The very thought is sheer lunacy!” I cried. However, the other Sara [pictured above] – the one who did not attempt to use me as Takedown currency – beseeched me to give it a chance, and upon giving it such a chance, decided that perhaps there was room on the desert table for cakes of a diminutive figure. Wonders never cease.

We feasted and feasted, and our stomachs churned and roiled with new pleasures. The event was unparalleled success, and Grant V. Laine, after spending the day eating his way through every goulash hall in Radegast, Germany, did eventually make his way back to the welcoming shores of America, berating the absent-minded pilot of his zeppelin nearly the entire way back. I was honored to serve in this great man’s assistance once more – and dear reader, in yours.