Bacon And Beer Classic

Working at Bacon & Beer Classics is a different experience than attending.
Some notes:
1) Security is TIGHT.
There will be metal scanners, etc. There will be scalpers buying/​selling tickets. They will check your tickets before you can get to the line. There will be SEPARATE entrances for each kind of ticket (i.e. VIP, General Admission, Press, Staff)
2) The Crowd will get ROWDY.
I didn’t have to roam around to know that people would be loud and kind of crazy. Luckily, no fights broke out but people, mostly the drunk guys did try their best to instigate and/​or provoke such behavior. Every time a souvenir ceramic Bacon & Beer Classic tasting glass was dropped/​broken the crowd would go «OOOOOOOHOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhh» right in some embarrassed/​drunk girl’s or guy’s face.
REAL Classy.
To top that off, they only give out 1 souvenir glass per person even if accidents like dropping glass happens because I think they reuse the same glass stock for the other 3 city locations for this beer fest.
3) Food SMELLED delicious. From what I saw from people bringing food up to my pouring station waiting on their beers, sausages, pizzas, and all other kinds of pork were to be had. Many raved about the food. I could only imagine.
4) The bathroom lines were ridiculous as usual. However, the men’s were tolerable. The promenade area had 2 for each sex & gender.
Overall, it’s a fun experience and I had a blast even while working the beer taps. I mean I’m a beer guy after all. How could it NOT be fun?
Well…if I had dropped the souvenir ceramic glass perhaps…
FAN.

Clearly, I love bacon and beer. Who doesn’t? Heathens, that’s who!
Getting in was easy. The line wasn’t crazy and it moved quickly. They have you open your bag and look inside, scan you with a metal detector, and check your ID before coming inside. They don’t let you bring in water even if it’s sealed and you have a designated driver ticket, which would be fine if they made water readily available inside, which they don’t. Besides keeping everyone dehydrated, it also means you can’t rinse out that stout taste from your glass before pouring in an IPA.
Speaking of the glasses, they’re a massive 4 ounces! This was way more than a tasting of a beer, and because I wanted to try many things quickly, I ended up tossing a lot of what was poured to me. Damn shame.
There wasn’t as much food as you would think, and knowing what I know now I would have eaten before coming. The beer lines are much shorter then the food lines, and you only get a small sampling of whatever you’re eating. There was chocolate bacon cotton candy, bacon vodka sauce pizza from Two Boots, bacon brownies, bacon mac n cheese (or so I heard), bacon sliders, pork sliders, some kind of pork bun thing, bacon maple cookies.
As for the beer, I really enjoyed Abita’s Strawberry, Left Hand Brewery’s Stranger, Lagunita’s A Little Sumpin Sumpin, Flying Dogs Sour Cherry, Ommegang Witte, Sovereign’s Apples & Honey, and Two Roads Rye 95 (my favorite: Belgian, rye based, with a 9.4 ABV– this is an awesome beer)
There were games, I remember a bouncy castle. There were also companies handing out merchandise and promotions. Über was giving out bottle openers, sunglasses, and 25% off Uberpool rides; 94.3 The Shark had totes and fake tattoos; and I got a beer cozy from American Whiskey.
The booths are set up around the stadium, in the areas where the concessions and bathrooms are. You drunkenly make your way around the circle.
Bathrooms were everywhere and the lines for them were short. Music seemed to be mainly top 40.
The vibe was really friendly, a party like atmosphere as opposed to a tasting. I met some new people, started a lot of conversations with strangers. Every time someone dropped their glass and it shattered (I saw it happen about 5 or 6 times, one girl actually spilled her beer all over my coat sleeve before dropping the glass to the ground), everyone in the vicinity would roar «Oooooohhhhh» and it seemed to spread through the stadium.
While I had fun I preferred the NYC Craft Beer Festival. It’s smaller which I like. The lines are shorter, there’s access to water, more reasonably sized glasses, and while you have to pay for your food you at least get enough of it.