An Event Pigs Hate but Antacid Sellers Love

What started 13 years ago as a sidewalk send-off to summer returns this weekend with a five-day feast at what has become the Super Bowl of barbecue.

By sundown on Labor Day, it’s expected that 300,000 people and 126,000 pounds of ribs will have experienced the Best of the West Nugget Rib Cook-Off in Sparks, Nev. One of 22 cookers will emerge as the prince of pig cookery.

Stephen Ascuaga, senior executive vice president at John Ascuaga’s Nugget, the event’s host, said it began in 1989 with nine cookers and about 30,000 people.

Jim Clayton’s Texas Outlaws Barbecue in Elizabethtown, Ky., took top prize last year after going through four tons of ribs. “Last time I checked, pigs weren’t an endangered species. They went for a good cause,” Clayton said.