City gets ready for its 'Week of Beaks'
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 6, 2015 1:50 AM
Goldsboro's second annual Beak Week festival starts Friday by way of a wing cookoff among 31 professional cooking teams that will take over the now vacant parking lot across from City Hall from 6-8 p.m.
What follows will be a week full of poultry-themed activities that will be aimed at celebrating Wayne County's poultry industry.
At Friday night's wing cookoff, attendees can purchase 10 wings for $5.
"This is a killer event," Parks and Recreation director Scott Barnard said. "The wings were donated by Case Farms. The cook teams are doing it, essentially, for free. It's going to be an amazing opportunity."
On Friday, the team that receives the most votes wins. All proceeds from the event will go to the Boys & Girls Club of Wayne County.
On Saturday, the official festival will be held from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Professional cooking teams will return to Saturday's event to battle in a barbecue cookoff. But the products of the cookoff will not be for public consumption. The teams are all registered with the Kansas City Barbecue Society nd will be competing for $20,000.
"It's KCBS rules, they cannot serve what they're cooking," Barnard said. "So you'll smell the food, and it'll smell amazing, but that's all going to be judged. The good news is that I've got at least five different food vendors for Saturday's event. We've got food trucks ranging from our local Eat Roadkill, we've got a taqueria, we've got a shaved ice truck, we've got hot dogs and Zaxby's and Pizza Inn will be there, too."
The professional teams will be cooking four different categories of food: Pork, chicken, ribs and brisket. Chicken will be judged at noon, ribs will be judged at 12:30 p.m., pork will be judged at 1 p.m. and brisket will be judged at 1:30 p.m.
At Saturday's event there will also be two stages for live music, inflatables for children and plenty of vendor booths and food trucks for the public to enjoy.
On Sunday, the second annual Tour de Coop bike ride will start at Stoney Creek Park on East Ash Street and tour along the park's disc golf course and take participants by local chicken coops as well. It will run from 2 to 4 p.m.
On Tuesday, there will be a wing eating contest to see who is the fastest wing eater in Wayne County. The contest will be held at 6 p.m. in the John Street parking lot downtown. Cost of entry is $20 and only 20 slots are available.
On Thursday, the annual doctors vs. lawyers softball game -- Fowl Play -- will run from 6:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. at the Boys & Girls Club at 1401 Royall Ave.
"That is a good time. We try not to send any of our weekend warriors to the hospital," Barnard said, joking.
Beak Week will wrap up on Friday, Sept. 18 and Saturday, Sept. 19, with a Heroes Cup cornhole championship in the John Street parking lot downtown.
Friday night is open play for the public from 4 until 11 p.m. and is free. On Saturday, there will be open play for the public and for official teams competing for the title.
"It's open to the public, so people can come out then and there and register to play," Barnard said. "This is a challenge for people who are either current or former military, EMS, fire or police, and they can register through our website."
Cost of entry for the tournament is $60 if a team registers before the event, or $80 at the event. Registration includes two Heroes Cup T-shirts, a slot in the tournament and two tickets for prize drawings that will be held hourly.
The tournament is sanctioned through the American Cornhole Organization.
The total cost of holding the week-long festival is $25,000, all of which will be paid for by sponsors.
"Beak Week has been designed to be Goldsboro's signature festival," Barnard said. "Mount Olive has the Pickle Festival, Wilmington has the Azalea Festival, Fayetteville has the Dogwood Festival, New Bern has Mums, Wilson has Whirligigs, and Goldsboro was kind of floundering. It took us three years to get to the first one, which was last year, and this is our second one."
The festival has been moved to downtown this year in preparation for next year's event, which will be held after downtown's Streetscape project is completed.
Barnard said the festival is sure to be a good time for anyone who attends, and he hopes the festival lasts for years to come.