BLOG: Alabama Phoenix Festival & Weekend in Birmingham!
If you have been living under a rock that you can’t get BevNerd Transmissions from, I was at Alabama Phoenix Festival this weekend in Birmingham, Alabama! (May 25-26) as an event guest and to coordinate the BevNerd Sampling Booth & BevNerd LIVE! Panel on Sunday.
I want to thank the staff at APF, the event goers that accepted free meat snacks from us, the ones who attended the panel and especially those who joined the Bevenger community either on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram! :)
I was joined by my first chum Twitterless Andrew, roving zombie & convention blogger Matt (from www.zombiesinmyblog.com), MaBo (cosplaying as Silent Bob), and The Highway Man!
Due to my Monday - Friday grind, I wasn’t able to make it for Friday’s festivities, but who’d thunk it that Silent Bob cosplayer would be such a great barker for BevNerd? He was drumming up people’s saliva glands and eagerness to try one of the snacks we would be dishing out the next day.
We arrived on Saturday morning and hurried with the booth setting-upping. I’m proud to have partnered up with two brands of snack food for APF and here they are:
Wild Bill’s Beef Jerky & Hannah’s Pickled Snacks
We gladly passed out to hungry attendees Teriyaki & Hickory Smoked Wild Bill’s Jerky and Hannah’s Pickled Red Hot Sausage & new individually wrapped Eggs!
Not to forget we were also spreading the word about The Surge Movement! These guys have started a rabid Facebook group that’s fighting to get Coca-Cola to bring back the citrus supercharged SURGE soda! Let’s get them even MORE followers!
We met lots of cool folks on Friday night. Before we knew it, our time had come to eat and head to the hotel. We stayed at Candlewood Suites in Birmingham and LOVED it. It was such a nice room at such a great value. ($48, thanks!) There was a slip up because of Hotels.com. They stated the room was 2 beds and it was only 1 bed. Candlewood only has 1 bed rooms/suites. They gladly upgraded us to their best room and the 1st one was ALREADY a great room. I felt important!
Checked in and tummies rumbling, we headed to Homewood to eat and film some content. We decided on eating at Urban Cookhouse. GREAT! CHOICE! I loved my dish called The Down Home; Thick slices of smoked turkey & pineapple ham, hot cheddar pasta, broccoli salad and a warm orange roll. They nailed it, and I polished it off with a Good People Pale Ale.
With rejuvenating food in our system, we had to pull a double duty next. That’s right, eat dessert AND film it! We drove a short distance to Steel City Pops. It’s a local gourmet popcicle shop that makes their frozen treats in house and with locally sourced ingredients. I was on hand to enjoy a pop and film a travel/local food special video. I won’t tell you what I had just yet, but Twitterless Andrew enjoyed a chocolate & peanut butter pop and The Highway Man killed a Blood Orange pop!
Stay tuned for this episode’s release, soon!
The BevNerd crew and I wound down for the night with hot & fresh Krispie Kreme donuts and watched Office Space.
SUNDAY. Breakfast. We ate at Over Easy. I had a SUPER FANTASTIC BREAKFASSSSSST! It was called Hash Basket: Two hash brown baskets, each filled with one egg over easy, and bacon, topped with goat cheese, herbs, diced tomatoes, and crème fraiche, with a biscuit. Loved every single bite. I also really liked Matt’s organic blue grits from Wilsonville, AL.
Today was THE day. The BevNerd LIVE! Panel was at 11:30 am and we needed to get the ball rolling. We got into our conference room early because we had a lot of AV equipment to set up. The APF staff was nothing but helpful and nice to all of us and got us set up in record time.
The panel did break my expectations of 15 people! So that’s a win, we had about 35-40 folks there and they sat through my ramblings! I’ll be posting most of the panel in video form ASAP. It’s rendering now. I did record 2 reviews during the panel with a future release soon.
Sunday flew by, there was a Doctor Who themed wedding! Instead of an altar, the couple was married in front of the TARDIS! NICE! I passed out every single remaining piece of beef jerky and pickled meat. This took a LOT of walking around with sample trays, but we were well received of course!
With no more product left and all flyers passed out, it was time to pack up and head home. :(
Twitterless Andrew was hungry, so we stopped for lunch at Izzo’s Illegal Burrito. I got the modest Misdemeanor sized burrito. However, Andrew ordered the ILLEGAL BURRITO! Food challenge is ON! The goal? Eat the entire 3+ pound burrito in 15 minutes or less.
I’ll be darned. He did it! Free meal and a shirt! KUDOS to you. I think force feeding yourself couldn’t have been more delicious!
Back in Gadsden. Alabama Phoenix Festival was a great time had by all. It’s for the young and old! There’s something for every type of geek or nerd there. GO NEXT YEAR. It’s only gotten bigger, better, and more fun.
I have two days’ worth of photos from the event. I’m lazy and threw them all on two BevNerd Facebook albums see them at
http://on.fb.me/Zf8ljK SATURDAY
http://on.fb.me/10AMnZI SUNDAY
LINKS:
http://www.alabamaphoenixfestival.com
http://www.wildbillsfoods.com
http://www.facebook.com/HannahsPickledSnacks
http://www.urbancookhouse.com
http://www.steelcitypops.com
http://www.eatovereasy.com
http://www.zombiesinmyblog.com
