Vote For Pedro

The Barbeque Contest

The terrible city that I live in has something called Memphis in May. It is supposed to get people to come to Memphis from surrounding areas and spend money. It is a month long and there is something going on every weekend.

We went out on the first weekend to their Irish celebration and watched the jig dancers, saw Irish sheep dogs and saw these weird oversized puppet things (like the walking Mickey Mouse at Disneyland but creepier). That was great and inexpensive.

So this last weekend we thought we would continue to take part in the festivities. We wanted to get real barbeque. "What better place than the international Barbeque Contest Festival?", we thought. It took place over Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We didn't have time to go on the first two days so we went Saturday early evening. We parked about a mile away and walked down to the park where it was being held and paid our $14 to get in and it smelled like it was going to be SOOOO worth it!

We walked in to find all of these booths set up and they were in sections for ribs, pork, shoulder and so on. The strange thing was that at these booths, there weren't that many people eating. But we soon saw signs that said that in order to try the food, we had to be judges (they can't sell or give away food because the contestants are not inspected by the health inspector). So we followed the signs that pointed us toward the judging tent. We got there to find it empty and a sign that said that judging takes place from 3pm-6pm on Thursday and Friday.

So... it's over?

There is no Barbeque?

Surely, they wouldn't let us pay to get in to a barbeque festival that has no barbeque!

So, we kept walking thinking maybe they were hiding it from us. Finally we stopped and ask a nice man that had barbequed for the contest. He informed us that there is no barbeque to be had on Saturday. He also thought that it was ridiculous. He couldn't give us barbeque or he would be disqualified for the next year (that and he was all out) so instead he gave us a piece of fudge. It was nice of him but that did NOT change my feeling about the whole thing.

To say that I was mad is to say that I kinda like my husband (I am crazy in love with him). I left fuming!

How do you have a barbeque festival on a day where there is NO BARBEQUE!?!?!?!?!

Needless to say, we are currently in the process of finding out who needs a good shake and getting our money back for the barbeque festival that turned out to be not a festival and have no barbeque and you don't find out that there is no barbeque until you are in the barbeque festival. That is a scam!

posted by Mrs. Andrea Wood @ 5/16/2005 10:50:00 AM