There’s a style of facial hair known as a hipster, defined as the separate growths of a mustache, soul patch, and chin beard. While the local search for a hipster sporting a hipster was fruitless, I did start to notice a lot of dudes are rocking facial hair.
Then I met local musician Bryan Nelson, who appeared on our Oct. 19, 2007, cover. In addition to producing, engineering, and playing in Gorch Fock and the Little Bicycles, the guy has a 29-inch beard. A bright-orange one.
Intrigued, I asked to photograph him. It snowballed from there. Nelson told me he was “sponsoring” beards for Misprint‘s 2nd Annual Beard and Moustache Contest, which went down last Saturday at Club de Ville. I learned a few things:
1) It truly is an art.
2) Ladies love the facial locks.
3) Some ladies don’t mind wearing the facial locks.
Click through the image gallery, collected from the Misprint contest and Rio Rita’s recent gear swap, for all the handlebar you can handle.
This article appears in February 8 • 2008.