It’s a noteworthy beard, but is it award-worthy?

My beard is nice, I’m told. A lot. It’s one of the more frequent things I hear about it. It’s nice, gorgeous, spectacular and so on.

“Now that’s a beard,” said Adam Tschorn, men’s style and grooming writer for the Los Angeles Times, upon seeing my chin pelt a few months ago.

PHOTOS: Burbank Leader reporter goes to great lengths at beard competition

I say this not to brag, but by way of explaining why earlier this month I was among the 140 competitors, including women and children, in the 2015 Los Angeles Facial Hair Society’s third annual Beard & Moustache Competition in Hollywood, an open contest that raised funds for the charity Dawg Squad. The compliments had gone to my head.

Tschorn, who has judged beard contests before, had told me I had a decent shot, but he warned that it takes more than good beard to win — one must have “swagger.”

Some 700 spectators, many bearded, ventured out to the Avalon Hollywood for the Saturday afternoon contest, billed as the largest such event in the city, according to the facial hair society’s Alana Beck. It was like some mix of costume contest, “dad bod” beauty pageant and fashion show for the subculturally hip — competitors each got a free Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boy.

Many of those not in dandified duds wore costumes fitting classic tropes: caveman, circus strongman, Victorian gentleman, lumberjack, construction worker, biker and more than one 1970s-era jogger. There were also a fair number of everymen, like me, bedecked in that unpretentious style that has of late been termed “normcore.”

“My beard speaks for itself,” said Burbank resident Ryan Dreyer, who was wearing sandals, blue surf shorts and a black T-shirt with a Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor printed on the back.

Dreyer hasn’t shaved in 16 years, not since he got out of the Marines, he said. The accumulated fuzz, measuring more than a foot in length, gets caught in box tape and drill guns at work, the CBS television series set-dresser said, jokingly.

“Bearders” came from as far away as Austin, Portland and Miami — Austin and Portland boasting the “weirdness” and whatever other mystical, omniscient hipness has granted beards their moment — as well as from Sacramento and Long Beach, many of them representing beard clubs in those locales.

The men, and at least one woman, competed in categories for natural mustaches, styled mustaches, partial mustaches and “business beards” of 2 inches or less. Full beard categories were divided four ways, by length — over and under 12 inches — and then by styled versus natural presentation. A freestyle category allowed any and all imaginable curling and coiffing.

In the “whiskerina” category smooth-cheeked women faced off to be honored for their best artificial beard. Likewise a children’s category featured adorable tots decked out as follows, in part: one merman with white cotton beard, one Davy Jones pirate with foam-rubber octopus-tentacle beard and one turn-of-the-century strongman with a drawn-on curly mustache.

The real mustaches were brush-like, curlicued, looped or long and straight in the English style, plus handlebars, musketeers and friendly mutton chops, so-called because they meet under the nose.

Beards in full, facial bushes and mandibular brambles, came in hues of ginger, fire-red, brown, black, gray and white. Fake-bearded Ashley Drake wore hers brilliant blue, earning her top whiskerina honors.

Joseph Haydostian of Fresno was the freestyle category champ and best in show for fashioning a teacup and saucer from his beard with mustache whiskers twisted into letters spelling “tea time.” Styling took seven hours, after 30 hours of practice, he said. On stage, he wore a giant, green velour Mad Hatter hat and poured “steaming” dry ice from a tiny tea kettle into his cupped beard.

My category, natural beard under a foot, featured 44 men — the most of any category. What was reddish stubble last July has blossomed into roughly 7.5 dark brown inches, tinted red at the cheeks and blonde at the chin, with gray encroaching from the sideburns.

I should note that before growing a beard, I was almost never complimented for my looks. Once, I think, a woman I served with in the Marines noticed a green shirt made my eyes look pretty, back when I was professionally required to shave and run and do other disgusting things.

However, since going woolly, the compliments have become routine, though not tiresome. Strangers stop me on the street, men nod approval and women sometimes ask to stroke my downy cheeks. Days before L.A.’s bearded bacchanal, a stranger stopped me at an arcade game-themed bar in downtown Los Angeles and told me I had the best beard he’d seen in years.

This stranger implored me never to shave. He had “sold out” when he enrolled in medical school, he said, forlorn. Distantly, I thought I heard the sound of Pac Man dying.

It’s a funny thing to compete at, facial hair is. It’s not like it’s an athletic skill, said Alfred Nash, a rocket scientist — seriously — at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who competed with a styled mustache that measured 20 inches, tip-to-spindly-tip, which he twitched on stage to remarkable effect.

Nash, who was dressed in pseudo-Victorian garb that included a wool vest and arm garters, is also a professional bike-race announcer. He started growing the ‘stache in 2011 as part of Movember, a monthlong campaign in November during which participants’ lip wool is allowed to flourish to raise awareness and funds for men’s health causes.

Since then, Nash has competed in six contests, nabbing the bronze at the 2013 national championships and a silver in the L.A. event last year. Now, the facial hair has become a part of his identity — “people would go into shock” if he shaved, he said.

This year, Nash didn’t walk away with either a gold, silver or bronze trophy — a plaque featuring a casting of a roaring, top-hat adorned grizzly bear head. Neither did I.

The top beardsman in my category was Michael Narino of Miami, Fla., with his dark-rusty, 11.5-inch beard. He wore a powder blue, velvet smoking jacket with wide, black satin cuffs and lapel accented with jewels and black-and-gold braid. On back was stitched “Bearded Nature Boy” in gold, cursive embroidery, a nod to Ric Flair, though Narino’s Mohawk was Mr. T-esque.

I had queued up behind Narino, waiting to get into the club before the event. That’s when I’d realized how thick the competition would be.

“I feel totally out of my league,” I had written under a photo of Narino that I had posted to Instagram. I was right.