CU and Ithaca community members queue up for their milk mustaches

Anna Stern, 7, displays her milk mustache July 27 at the Dairy Bar. She is the daughter of Art Stern, a manager in Planning, Design and Construction, and Lauran Jacoby, in Human Resources. Robert Barker/University Photography

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Lauren Kunis saw the line.

It kept going and going and going. For four hours she scooped vanilla ice cream into a blender, added milk and dished the mustache-making concoction into small cups for a lengthy line of Ithacans hoping for milk mustache stardom.

The Milk Mustache Mobile rolled into town July 26, stopping at the Cornell Dairy Bar where as many as 1,000 local kids and adults vied for their moment of fame. Each person in line lathered their lips with the milkshake-like potion. Their digital picture was taken for the contest judges and each contestant received a personal Polaroid picture of their mustache. The Ithaca winner, who has not been chosen, will compete with winners from other cities. And from that group, a national winner will be chosen to appear in a milk mustache advertisement in ESPN Magazine.

On this sunny day, Cornell football players waited in line, local day camp groups patiently waited and even Susan Henry, the new dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, put on a milk mustache.

Kunis, an incoming Cornell freshmen from Pittsford, N.Y., had volunteered to work the event. She plans to major in government and participate on the women's gymnastics team. Kunis said she has ice cream scooping experience having worked at Bill Wahl's ice cream parlor on the Erie Canalway Trail in Rochester. "The line here," Kunis said while scooping, "doesn't seem to end."

Cornellians from all over campus and children from all over the area joined in the event. The YMCA day camp filled a full-sized, regularly scheduled Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit bus with contestants.

"We heard about the Milk Mustache event on the radio," said camp counselor Jill Sonnenberg, a student at Daemen College in Buffalo. "We had been planning on taking the kids to Taughannock Park. We turned down Taughannock Park and came here instead."

Tevin, a 5-year-old day camper from the Greater Ithaca Activities Center, led continual cheers with his friends: "We want milk! It tastes good! We want milk! It tastes good!"

There was lots of delicious milk. Amy Howard, the 2000 Tompkins County Dairy Princess, served up hundreds of cups of cold milk. Kids could win milk posters by kicking soccer balls into goals, adults could get their health screened, the Cornell's dairy plant offered tours every 15 minutes.

Sabrina, whose age is "plain old 6," she said, had recently visited a farm with the YMCA day camp and enjoyed seeing a Cornell cow, Bessie, getting milked at this event. She said her favorite chocolate-chip cookie chaser happens to be milk.

Jay Greenhill, of the marketing firm BSMG of Chicago, coordinated the event with dairy bar manager Kim Bukowski and Ed Hershey, director of Cornell Communications Strategies. Greenhill, who has been to 10 other cities on this tour, said this had been the best-attended milk-mustache event at a retail location.

"I've been here in Ithaca for two days; it's beautiful. It reminds me of Madison," said Greenhill, a 1999 University of Wisconsin graduate. It turns out Greenhill once drove a Ben & Jerry's marketing truck after college.

One day-camper, Dylan Wotros, 9, hedged his bets on a favorite beverage: "I drink both chocolate and regular milk."