On Thursday afternoon and evening I watched a pair of competitions. One on television, the other live. One a dramatic and ultimately heart-breaking athletic battle on the grandest possible stage for the two competing teams; the other an informal challenge between baristas to see who could draw the pretties pictures in lattes as judged by the gut reactions of three randomly chosen spectators.
Since my two main pursuits are WacoFork and sports, the afternoon and evening made for an interesting dichotomy?
See what I did there? I was referring to watching the Mart Panthers play for the 1A state title on TV and then attending the Thursday Night Throwdown at Dichotomy Coffee & Spirits.
The last I counted, I've covered the actual competition of 22 different sports. I do not intend to add barista throwdown to that list, so I will not be giving you a pour-by-pour recap of the Thursday Night Throwdown. I will briefly describe what it looked like. A few people made lattes at some fancy-looking coffee machines. Judges were designated and decided each round by pointing to the latte picture they liked better. A group of two dozen spectators mostly socialized, but did take time to peer over the shoulders of the judges to see each round's offerings. There was some oohing and aahing and giggling over the weak attempts of the throwdown novices.
It was fun.
Michael Suttle fought his way through three fierce rounds of competition (and, of course, by "fought his way," I mean he drew the best pictures in the coffee) to take first place. He bested fellow barista Cody Ferguson in the finals, gaining two out of three votes in a split decision. the photo with this blog shows Suttle's finals entry in the foreground.
Baristas from Common Grounds, Starbucks and Dichotomy competed alongside amateur baristas. Kudos to Dichotomy for hosting the event and here's hoping it becomes a weekly thing on everybody's weekly things to do in Waco list.
