It was a big night for air guitar on April 25th. Three qualifiers in three different cities, and two of them were virgin territory (and also there haven't been US Air Guitar competitions there... heyoooo!). One of these was Shippensburg, PA, which hosted their first qualifier under the auspices of their local competitive bearding group, Bearding Man.
Now, not everyone who competed or was involved was a bearder, or maybe even a beard enthusiast - although come to think of it, this is a beardier-than-average sport - but they surely brought all their friends and associates, and it looks like they won a few converts, too.
I'm not sure if Shippensburg is technically in Amish country or what, but the show was hosted by The Amish Airsassin, who wore Amish garb except for the leather chaps, a nice touch - and that got me to thinking: this is an art you could probably still take up even if you eschew modern technology. You could air guitar an acoustic guitar! No one's stopping you! Or maybe you could air guitar any guitar at all since you aren't actually using one. I know the rules of competitive air guitar, but I don't know the rules of Amishness. I would hope this kind of fun would be allowed, because I want every culture and country in the world to give it a shot.
Continuing on to the main point, your winner, and continuing on to the Eastern Regional Finals (aka the DC Semi), is DC stalwart Rear Admiral Kickass. He will be joined by Dirk Smathers and Air Miller, and I hope that they will all actually go (I mean, I assume the Rear Admiral will)! That's the curse of the new qualifier, I'm coming to realize. Everyone has a whale of a time that night, and the winner is super stoked about the whole situation, and then they have to think about getting time off work to go to another city (hopefully they don't have to think about paying for it since they get a cash prize to defray those costs). So I hope the two runners-up both also go to DC and shred on!
photo credit: Jim Cheney