Daily Freeman reporter Paula Ann Mitchell did a little reporting on the annual Hudson Valley RibFest, to be held at the Ulster County Fairgrounds this weekend, and was astounded to learn that Ovarian-Americans would be allowed to participate:
Whoever said that the primal art of barbecue is mainly a guy thing never attended the Hudson Valley RibFest at the Ulster County Fairgrounds in New Paltz.
Actually, Daily Freeman, I think it was you who just said barbecue is for men. But okay. Tell us more.
Who cares if fingers get coated with gooey, red sauce that drips onto clothing.
Or even if it requires a harsh eating technique to rip the meat from the bones and a load of toothpicks to scrape the residual [sic] from one’s teeth.
Got a vision yet of guys beating their chests like cavemen?
Get it out of you [sic] mind, stressed event organizers.
Noooooo! Not the harsh eating technique!
But though RibFest organizers repeatedly tell her that There Will Be Estrogen, Mitchell still doesn't believe them, and continues to interrogate everyone involved about these scandalous rumors of women rib-eaters and NASCAR fans. How could it beeeeee?
Fans will also get a chance to take a spin around the track in a racing simulator and spin the prize wheel to win NASCAR-related prizes.
Oelgeschlager dismissed the notion that this spectacle is again geared toward testosterone levels.
Most incredible of all: Women are even to be found in the barbecue pit.
Just to prove that it’s not all guys getting down and dirty in the pits, such teams as “Diva Q,” featuring Danielle Dimovski from Ontario, Canada, and “Swamp Pit BBQ,” led by Julie Day of Wantagh, N.Y., will be competing in this year’s event.
Still clutching your pearls in horror? Don't worry, you refined women of the Hudson Valley: There will be shopping.
For the naysayers who still view the RibFest as a place akin to machismo heaven, Costantino said there will be plenty of vendors to satisfy the women shoppers and even a demonstration by Hudson Valley chef Jordan Schor and company.
Schor, who is the executive chef at Valerie’s restaurant in Kingston, will be creating elegant food made with local ingredients.
Not content to astound us with hard-hitting news reports of women cooking and eating things, the Daily Freeman hints at the spectacle of women riding mechanical bulls. (And we thought this was a family newspaper.)
And don’t forget the mechanical bull that’ll be set up near the beer tent.
That, Costantino, reckons, is a guy thing.
“I don’t think you’ll see too many women get on it,” she said.
Oelgeschlager begs to differ. He thinks a few might pull up their skirts and give it a whirl.
“I double dog dare you,” he said in a burst of laughter. “As I said before, this whole thing is also for the ladies.”
In case you were wondering if only little upstate New York newspapers think it's news that women do stuff: Nope. The big papers do it too. Here, in a story from 2008, the Boston Globe reports breathlessly that women sometimes go ice fishing. (I'm sure that's never happened before in human history.)
Photo of ribs by Flickr user joshbousel. Published under Creative Commons license. Can you believe women eat such things?
