THOUSAND OAKS : Whiskeroo Champ Takes It by a Hair

It was a tossup between a Santa Claus look-alike and a guy who appeared to have just stepped off the stage at a ZZ Top concert. In the battle of scroungiest beard, old Saint Nick won by a hair.

His long white beard also gave 73-year-old Bud McIntyre of Agoura Hills a second-place win in the fullest-beard category of the Conejo Valley Days’ Whiskeroo Contest on Saturday. Miss Conejo Valley USA and her court, who served as judges, did some touchy-feely before deciding the winners.

Stan McClain, whose salt-and-pepper ZZ Top-style beard landed him a second-place award for the scroungiest beard, said he saves a lot of money in razor blades.

“I have it trimmed every six to eight months whether it needs it or not,” said McClain, 45, who works as a custodian at University Elementary School in Thousand Oaks.

Several thousand people attended the festival, which started Saturday with a children’s parade down Thousand Oaks Boulevard and included a chili cook-off.

While people wandered among the concession booths at Conejo Creek Park, organizers kept their fingers crossed that the rain clouds would not scare away visitors.

“That’s not rain; that’s dust control,” Steve Rubenstein, president of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce, said during one quick sprinkle. “We ordered it.”

The 35th annual Conejo Valley Days will continue Wednesday with the opening of the carnival at Conejo Creek Park, off Janss Road just east of the Moorpark Freeway. The carnival will be open from 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 5 p.m. to midnight Friday, noon to midnight Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.