This is probably not the kind of image that comes to mind when you think about Bonnaroo.
But it’s an image I saw my first night there. I snapped it just after I watched a couple of people saw the head off a hog with something that sounded and looked a lot like the circa-1980 Sears hedge clipper we had growing up. Off the body, the head looked almost rubber, almost like a cartoon. Except for the eyes. The eyes were tiny and wet.
“Ya’ll are sick, taking pictures of pig torture,” somebody next to me said, snapping a picture of his own. Two guys stuck the end of the hedge clipper into the hog’s neck and started going to town on the ribs. A man walking by trotted up and licked the head’s cheek. Thursday night at the Food Truck Oasis.
This was not pig torture. It was Alabama-based Jim and Nick’s Bar-B-Q taking the lead in the Fatback’s Collective Bonnaroo debut. The Collective is a community of politically progressive chefs, restaurateurs, and gourmands who really dig their pork. They share with Bonnaroo, according to Melany Mullens, one of a multiple publicists pushing Bonnaroo’s world of food, “a dedication to sustainability and pork.”
I like this coupling. It sounds silly, but typed out it reads as simultaneously down-home and high-minded, which I figure is pretty much the point. Bonnaroo is carbon neutral; it gets 20% of its electricity from solar panels; I could go on. Bonnaroo is also a champion of the Southern culture of food and hospitality. Welcome to Bonnaroo’s Tennessee, a land of new kinds of partnerships. Continue reading