Fear the Beard Top Costume This Halloween

Run on beards as throngs of Giants fans dress up for Halloween

You already know that beard-wearing is at an all-time high because of the San Francisco Giants' playoff run.

But as Halloween weekend kicks in, those beards will really start coming out. Brian Wilson has now taken his place as the Bay Area's top Halloween costume for 2010.

"The harmonious convergence of the World Series and Halloween has spawned a cottage industry of fake beards," Fast Company reports. "Bay Area costume shops are being inundated with requests for the Brian Wilson beard."

Indeed, San Francisco costume shops can't keep the beards on the shelves. "I ordered a couple hundred, and then I ordered a couple hundred more," Noe Valley costume shop proprietor Mardie of One Stop Party Shop told NBCBayArea.com. "Right now I have five left."

Even babies can get in on the action. An Etsy vendor offers baby pacifiers strapped with a safe, non-toxic beard on the reverse of the nipple, creating the illusion that junior has an enormous jet-black Brian Wilson-style beard.

The beard is also a liaison to many Bay Area subcultures that don't normally identify with sports. Hipsters love long beards, and so do the big burly gay guys.

"I could absolutely picture him on the cover," the editor-in-chief of Bear magazine told the New York Times, in their lengthy essay on the popularity of the Wilson beard.

For a holiday so associated with suspense and terror, it's only natural that "Fear the Beard" would catch on for Halloween weekend.

Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who is going as Brian Wilson wearing bondage gear and a thong that says "F*** Yeah!"

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