64 rib joints. Four weeks. And you.
For our 2010 Tournament of Ribs, we put our faithful readers in charge of finding the best ribs in the Bay area. Baby back or spare, fine-dining or smokehouse, it was in your hands the entire way. And boy howdy did you pick up the gauntlet we threw down.
Well over 100,000 votes were cast in the CL Rib-Off head-to-head matches over the past month, in races that had as few as a couple dozen people participating to one massive battle (Brady's Backyard BBQ versus Smokin' Rib Shack) that had over 12,000 votes in a week's worth of voting.
That much participation is glorious, to be sure, but it also came with a few problems. Some fans experienced difficulty refreshing the voting pages, causing some serious frustration. Some matches had voting so regular and consistent that it seemed a bit, hmm, let's call it mechanical. Here at CL we learned a lot about how passion can overcome software and will be looking at different voting options for future tournaments.
In the end, though, the tournament came down to just two places:
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2010.