Celebrating Movember? Get your upper lip down to Well 80 for best mustache contest

Mustaches, it seems, provoke strong reactions.

Some guys, especially hipster types, spend time grooming elaborate variations. Others are hanging on to the same style Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds wore in the 1970s.

Then there are those who wouldn’t dream of growing a ’stache except in November, the month when the charity Movember asks “mo bros” to grow facial hair to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer and other men’s health issues.

On Thursday night, many of the mustachioed — and folks sporting faux mos — will gather at Well 80 Brewhouse for the second annual Olympia’s Best Mustache Contest.

The first contest last November drew at least 60 competitors and loads of onlookers, many of whom also sported mustaches, said Well 80 owner Chris Knudson.

“It was huge,” Knudson told The Olympian. “We did it on a Friday last year, and we decided to move it to a Thursday because it was so crazy busy.”

He intended the contest in part as a nod to Olympia’s brewing history.

“It’s sort of rooted in the fact that Leopold Schmidt, who started the Olympia Brewing Co., had this really great mustache,” he said. “It ties into that pioneer era of Olympia, and it’s just kind of fun and goofy and silly.”

Celebrity judges — including Mayor Cheryl Selby and Leopold Schmidt’s great-great-grandson Nick Schmidt — will choose winners in four categories:

• Leopold Style (a thick handlebar mustache);
• Freestyle;
• Movember (for those who started growing a mo on Nov. 1); and
• DIY or CraftStache, for those who’d rather make a mustache than grow one.

“We have crafting materials that we bring in so people can craft a mustache,” Knudson said, adding, “That was one of the most fun categories last year, because people got creative.”

Last year’s DIY entrants included one with a multicolored pipe-cleaner mustache and another sporting a mustache made from her own long hair. The winner was a woman sporting an elaborate Groucho Marx look, including thick glasses and bushy faux brows.

The overall winner, chosen from among the category winners by a vote of those present, will get his — or her or their — name on a trophy (which stays at the bar) and a $200 gift certificate. Category winners get $50 gift certificates and medals.

Knudson expects even stiffer competition this year as word about the contest spreads.

Last year’s champ, Tristan Mundwiler will be back and again sporting — as he does every day — the Leopold Schmidt look.

“It’s always looked like that,” he told The Olympian. “It’s kind of tough for it to do anything else.

“It’s been a fun mustache to have,” he said. “It’s not something everybody sees all the time. It seems to put smiles on people’s faces, but that’s not why I’m growing it.”

He was surprised to take top honors last year. “There were some pretty amazing mustaches there,” he said.

His attire, a bright red suit bedecked with reindeer, might have given him an edge, he admitted.

“It seemed like it should go with a mustache competition to have a little bit of flare, a little bit of added excitement,” he said. “Kind of like a frame around a painting.”

Olympia’s Best Mustache Contest

• What: The proudly mustachioed and wannabes with fakes gather to compete for the title of Olympia’s Best Mustache.
• When: 7-10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21
• Where: Well 80 Brewhouse, 514 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
• Cost: Free
• More information: 360-915-6653, well80.com
• A night of many mustaches: Watch highlights from the first contest in 2018 at https://youtu.be/dHoIcz_-N0E.