"Ribfest is back," shouts The Mayor, immediately before he descends into the turret of the tank and seals the door behind him. He is not wrong: Ribfest is indeed scheduled for this weekend, but the amount of cowardice shown in this one interaction makes me question his moral authority to preside over it.
This event is special in my town, but not for the reason that it used to be. Every year lately, folks get tooled-up on their homemade barbecue sauces and start to lay siege to the town around them. Nobody is really sure why this started so recently, but the active theory from the FEMA scientists is that AliExpress "has a lot of great shit for sale" and you'd be stupid not to experiment with putting some of it on some fall-off-the-bone braised pork.
Now, most folks would tell you that if you're going to end up fighting off your neighbour with an ice pick every year, simply don't go. This is a dismissive argument made in poor faith. And, worse than that, it's disrespectful to the meats, a concept that would make my dear mother faint in horror. The threat of imminent death that hangs over every moment of the proceedings simply adds a new dimension to the flavour.
Here's how I do it: I get in and I get out, fast. You don't want to be caught unaware while you're busy tucking into some "C"-tier stuff slopped out by the kindergarten teacher, Ms. Shotwell. No, the real strategist figures out from last year's ordeal who has the best barbecue in town. And this time, it's Barley Mowat, a young gun who used to be a television journalist before the Bad Times began. He got replaced by a machine sentience, has no job. Lives for the ribs, as do most of us now. Sometimes he starts to tell you a fact about how sewer pipes are made, or how many football fields long a structure is. It's best to just let him talk, even outside of the shrieking rage fest of a Ribfest-induced hallucination. We hang out at the bar, sometimes. He drinks a lot.
Barley's ribs are once again top-tier: he's got some kind of green chile sauce this year. Lends a real taste of the Southwest to every bite, which is tender and rich in equal measure. Plus, he clobbered a dude from the backpack store with a golf club when he tried to steal the up-armoured NASCAR that I used to drive to the event. Don't park in the designated spots, folks: like I said, get in and get out.
