Big Apple BBQ

This weekend was the Big Apple BBQ. It's a festival celebrating food -- specifically BBQ, so of course, Heidi and I went with great expectations. It turned out to the be the hottest day of the year (so far). First, we did a sweep of the whole thing to get a lay of the land. Once we had all of our information, we could make an informed choice about where we wanted to eat. My main criteria was that I wanted the line to be short and, if possible, at least partly shaded. Heidi cared more about the food. (She's not as fair-skinned as I am.) She was set on getting pork and we had a few options. Each booth had only one dish -- the signature dish of that restaurant -- so we had to choose carefully. There were a few booths that sold pork, but only one had pork with beans instead of cole slaw, so naturally, we went with that. That left us with Big Bob Gibson, and wouldn't you know, they had one of the longest lines and it was in the sun! But, we figured, if the line was long, it must mean it was the best. So we got in line and made the best of it. As we approached the front of the line (probably about 20 or 30 minutes), we noticed that everyone coming out of the line had cole slaw. So, once our turn came, we demanded, "Where are the beans?" The poor Bronx high school student working the register just said, "Ask him," and pointed to Big Bob himself. Heidi, not one to back down, said, "Hello Bob!" and was greeted with a smile which quickly turned to a look of confusion when she followed her friendly salutation with, "Where are the beans?" Big Bob responded, "We haven't had beans for the last 4 years." I said, "I hope this is good because we waited for a long time!" then laughed nervously and gave him a big thumbs up! We shoveled down our sandwiches in about 30 seconds flat -- 30 minutes standing in line for a 30 second meal. That sounds about right! By this time, I was starting to feel faint (literally) so we went to find another line where I could buy a bottle of water. That one was much shorter. The next thing on our agenda was to find the cupcake stand. When I saw that line, I said, "This is ridiculous. That restaurant is about three blocks away and I bet they have AC." But instead, we just went back to Heidi's apartment, which was a few blocks away, and sat in front of her AC. So, this is a first, people. I could have had a cupcake and chose not to. That's how hot it was.