Kansas City News Blog

It's midnight at the Brick, and I'm sipping PBR through a straw because I'm wearing a fake silver mustache. It's a lesson fake mustache wearers learn, lest they end up with a drink full of fake fur.

A guy calling himself “Rollie Fingers” gave me my 'stache. A rosy cheeked fellow in a tie and sport coat who goes by The Commodore tells me my name is either the Silver Fox or the Baron. I choose the latter.

Fingers and the Commodore are ambassadors of the Kansas City Fake Mustache Club, a group of twenty- and thirtysomethings who glue fake mustaches to their faces and hit the bars.

The members of the Mustache Club gather near the bar. The stocky Commodore slams bottles of Miller High Life. Dick 'Stachtardly watches a Godzilla flick. Fingers stands next to his girlfriend, Senorita Sergeant Sexy 'Stach, whose upper lip is covered by a shaggy green mustache. Fingers, who swiped his name from the Oakland A's curly-mustachioed relief pitcher from the late '60s and '70s, sports a bushy black walrus mustache. Even the bartender's chin is covered by a fake soul patch. The sweaty band's cheap fake mustaches, however, slipped off shortly after they started playing.

Earlier in the night, the Mustache Club met at the Grand Emporium for the Eastern Conference Champions rock show.

“One of the members of that band has a big, beautiful mustache that he's extremely proud of and wants to be a part of the Mustache Club,” Sexy 'Stach says.

A few days earlier, I meet Fingers and Sexy 'Stach at the Filling Station. They met at the first official mustache club even. They've been a couple ever since.

“Thirty-five years, and I haven't met anybody worth hanging out with,” Sexy 'Stach says. “And all of a sudden, my first mustache meeting, here you go.”

The Kansas City Fake Mustache Club started when the Commodore and Dick Stachtardly found fake mustaches at a costume shop and decided to wear them out to the bars. The next weekend, they did it again. They printed business cards to hand out at the bars, started a hotline -- 816-256-2052 -- and a couple of Web sites, including this MySpace page. The club took off last November with Mustache Mania I, a party at The Drop, which is co-owend by founding member Professor Peacock.

The Fake Mustache Club has since recorded a podcast – a rambling hourlong discussion of pot, Dolph Lundgren movies, Steve Miller concerts and Hooters. The first installment, surprisingly, lacked much mustache talk. That's coming in the next installment, Fingers says. They're planning to record a podcast every month.

Sexy Stach carries a case of fake mustaches, although she doesn't have her favorite bushy red 'stache.

“Strangers don't usually want to have anything glued to their face,” Fingers says. So Fingers and Sexy 'Stach keep a sheet of cheap, disposable mustaches in their car for such an occasion.

Sexy 'Stach says she gets disapproving looks from people in the bars. But the club is used to drawing attention. That's the point.

“It's so uncool that it's cool, maybe,” Fingers says. “We get a lot of comments. 'That's cool, but when are you going to have a real mustache club?'”

Fingers says he doesn't grow a mustache because he can't grow a good one.

“I don't really want one that bad,” Fingers says. “Fake mustaches are just fine. You can wear a different one each night, take it off when you're done. It doesn't itch. You just got to wash a little spirit gum off your face, and you're done.”

The club has two criteria for membership: You must be photographed wearing a fake mustache, and if you have a real mustache, you must glue a fake one over it.

The group snapped a photo of me with my silver 'stache Thursday night. Later, I was taking a leak when I overheard some bearded guy questioning the Commodore. I’d had four or five PBRs by then, but I think he asked why the Commodore doesn't just grow a real mustache.

“Because then it wouldn't be a fake mustache,” the Commodore told him.

Besides, a real mustache club wouldn't be nearly as fun. -- Justin Kendall