Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Ian F. King
photo by Ian F. King

I first met Noah when I was standing near the end of a line of three hundred people all waiting to eat thirty different kinds of food with bacon in them. It was this past winter’s Bacon Takedown at Radegast Hall in Williamsburg, and I was there with my friends Sara and Sara. We were there partly out of curiosity, but mostly out of obligation to a mutual friend from out of state who writes a blog very loosely themed on food, though primarily consisting of long esoteric meta-musings. The line was endless and unmoving, and we were wrapped so far around the bar that we were actually standing next to the last couple of tables that had bacon-based creations on them—but we just couldn’t go right up to them and start eating, because that would have been anarchy.

About a twenty minutes into us standing around in the same exact place in line, one of the competitors—a guy whom I had earlier noted via text to my blogger friend looked vaguely like he could have been the younger brother of one of the members of a favorite band of ours—took out a large Ziploc bag full of deep red strips of cooked bacon. These were apparently leftovers from the bacon brownie (with bacon whipped cream topping) dessert that he had entered in the competition. He reached across the invisible wall between himself and the back of the line to share with those of us who wouldn’t end up getting a chance to eat all of the other food for over an entire hour. Sara, Sara, and I all immediately decided that “Line Bacon Guy” was our hero, and I decided to cast my single vote for best creation his way, mostly because he was so generous at a time when we were all so hungry, but also because the brownie was great too.

Nearly a month later I was at a small housewarming party in Windsor Terrace, and at one point Line Bacon Guy came walking in the front door. It turned out one of the hostesses happened to be a friend of both of ours. I couldn’t wait for him to walk over to my side of the room, and as soon as he did I immediately confirmed that, yes, he was the same guy from Radegast Hall. I told him I was excited to call Sara and tell her I actually met Line Bacon Guy at a party. He told me his name was not, in fact, Line Bacon Guy, but rather Noah. As I kept talking to Noah, I found out that he and Sara would actually be competing against one another in the upcoming Takedown, where this time the main ingredient was tofu.

Just this past weekend I ran into Noah again, this time on a Saturday night at a bar in my neighborhood. Turns out it’s also his neighborhood, and he’s lived there most all his life. While he didn’t do so hot in the Tofu Takedown, he had just won the Judge’s Award in a Risotto competition. Not content to just ride high on that victory, he quickly began talking about the other competitions coming up that he would be entering.