Delaware beach bar hosts new Pumpkin' Chuckin' to fill the wacky void left by original

Delaware's world famous Punkin Chunkin competition may be dead, but the pumpkins still fly in Sussex County each November.

But it won't be thousands swarming a large Bridgeville field to watch imposing air gun cannons shoot pumpkins more than 4,000 feet. Instead, a somewhat sparse barroom crowd will gather this weekend at a small Rehoboth Beach-area surf bar for what they call Pumpkin' Chuckin'.

The only guns that'll be featured at Big Chill Surf Cantina Saturday will be the biceps of men and women who will have two throws each to see how far they can toss a pumpkin across a parking lot using only brute strength.

It's the bar's second annual Pumpkin' Chuckin.' The idea was hatched last year when it was announced that the iconic World Championship Punkin Chunkin would be canceled due to a lawsuit brought by a woman critically injured by an exploding air cannon in 2016.

"We wanted to pay homage," says Matt Garbutt, brand manager for both Big Chill Surf Cantina and its sister bar at the Indian River Inlet, Big Chill Beach Club. "Whatever is stupid and fun — that's what we're all about."

How the new Pumpkin' Chuckin' was born

When Punkin Chunkin was canceled in late summer 2017, Garbutt and Lincoln "Linc" Rogerson, Big Chill Surf Cantina co-owner and general manager, lamented its loss in a brainstorming meeting.

It didn't take long before the fun-loving bar, which hosts events like the Mad Hatter New Year's Eve Blacklight Party each year, figured out a way to keep pumpkins flying in Sussex County.

"We just decided to see how far people could throw a pumpkin because obviously we couldn't have catapults and all that," says Garbutt, who hosts the competition in the rear parking lot of the bar. "So we figured, 'Hey, what better fall event than giving people some beer and seeing how far they can throw these pumpkins.'"

It will be held Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. at the bar, located at 19406 Del. 1 next to the now-former home of Liquid Board Shop, which closed Oct. 1 after an 11-year run.

How to compete

If you want to toss a pumpkin Saturday, go to the event's online registration page at eventbrite.com. Just type Pumpkin' Chuckin' and Rehoboth Beach to find it.

It costs $10 to enter, with all the proceeds benefiting the Rehoboth Beach Volunteer Fire Company.

Each contestant will have two tosses and the person with the highest combined distance will be crowned the champion.

What do they win other than perhaps a trip to Walgreen's for some extra strength Doan's?

The winner gets a $200 La Vida Hospitality Group gift certificate. La Vida locations at Delaware's beaches include Big Chill Surf Cantina, Big Chill Beach Club, Crooked Hammock Brewery, Fork+Flask at Nage and the Taco Reho food truck.

How to watch

While it costs a Hamilton to enter the contest, it's free to spectate.

Just show up, grab a beer and prepare to point and giggle.

Crooked Hammock will be on site with a beer tent, pouring its craft brews on what is going to be a breezy, chilly day with the temperature hovering around 45.

And don't worry, you won't have to look your best if you are concerned the Science Channel will be the filming the ridiculousness, just like it used to at Punkin Chunkin.

"I don't think we're on their radar yet," jokes Garbutt, whose bar opened in 2011.

Last year's inaugural event

Since they only came up with the idea a few weeks before the inaugural Pumpkin' Chuckin' last fall, organizers scrambled to put it together.

Only 20 people — all men because no females entered — competed with maybe 40 people at most spectating.

With a pile of 18- to 20-pound pumpkins to choose from, Garbutt estimates the longest throw was maybe 40 feet.

But seeing how far the pumpkins would go was not the real draw in the end. It was the hilarious spectacle of people figuring out the best way to chuck a pumpkin, and usually failing miserably.

"Everyone thinks they know how to throw a pumpkin, but they don't," Garbutt says. "The funniest part wasn't the successes, but the fails."

La Vida Hospitality digital marketing manager Tom Little may have drawn the biggest laughs when he tried a new approach.

Since contestants have to throw the pumpkin from inside an area made of bales of hay, there is no running and throwing.

Little decided to turn his back to the parking lot and give the pumpkin a heave-ho over his shoulders while a friend of his shot video on his phone.

It didn't go as planned. 

The pumpkin flew out of his hands and he toppled over the hay bale, landing on his back. Within seconds, he was grabbing his belly while laughing uncontrollably while the crowd did the same.

"After seeing other people try it with little success, I thought that if I acted like a human catapult, I might be able to really use my legs and get behind it," Little says. "Instead, I lost my footing and it didn't go too far.

"If someone asked me right now what the best way was to throw a pumpkin, I still wouldn't know what to tell them."

The old Punkin Chunkin's history

Pumpkins flying through the air in Delaware dates back to 1986.

Held each weekend after Halloween, World Championship Punkin Chunkin had such a strong three-decade run that both Discovery Channel and Science Channel aired multiple specials over the years, even attracting the hosts of "Mythbusters" to anchor the broadcast.

After starting in Lewes, the event outgrew the location and eventually settled in Bridgeville.

Even before cable television specials began airing from the tiny, 2,000-person scrapple-making town of Bridgeville, national media had already come to The First State to document the downright zany event.

As The Washington Post wrote in 1998, "The Punkin Chunk is an utterly impractical event that is, paradoxically, a tribute to practical people — to the tinkerers, the backyard fixer-uppers, the can-do guys who look at a massive screw-up, rub their chins and say, 'Hey, I think we can fix this sucker if we just get some PVC pipe, an air compressor and some duct tape.'"

In its earliest years, a winning distance was less than 200 feet using catapults and other homemade contraptions. By 2013, the winning team, American Chunker Inc., shot a pumpkin nearly 4,700 feet using a high-powered air cannon.

Teams used everything over the years from homemade slings, catapults and centrifugal force launchers to trebuchets and pneumatic cannons.

Crowds as big as 100,000 would watch in the cold, plenty of whom would chug beers while watching pumpkins hurtle through the air. It was kind of like a gourd-themed tailgate.

The death of Punkin Chunkin

But the final years of Punkin Chunkin were a sad coda to its previous success.

The pumpkins were grounded in 2014 and 2015 after a former volunteer sued the organization, and the Bridgeville farm where it took place, over an ATV accident that injured the volunteer's spine. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed before going to trial.

The Bridgeville landowner then had second thoughts about hosting another Punkin Chunkin after all the legal wrangling.

After organizers considered a move to Dover Downs International Speedway in Dover and Maryland's Eastern Shore, the event returned to the same Bridgeville field in 2016 with new rules.

It was no longer an unregulated BYOB free-for-all due to both new insurance rules and a desire to clean up the sometimes-rowdy three-day event.

Frank Payton, then-president of World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association, told The News Journal at the time, "This is a family fun event, but we still wanted to let the partiers party. I want to see the legacy that started in Sussex County continue on and the path we were going down would not allow it to continue."

Organizers also killed the popular tailgating parties in the general parking lot, only allowing tailgating in a designated VIP parking/tailgate area or campsites with passes costing $75-$260. Beer was sold inside the event at a new beer garden for $5 each or five for $20.

And just when the event seemed to be on a proper path for the legacy to continue, disaster struck.

Suzanne Dakessian was managing a camera crew taping the Science Channel special when the trap door of an air cannon exploded off the machine and hit her in the head during the final day of the 2016 competition, its 29th year.

Science Channel did not air the special and announced they would not be returning in 2017.

And even though organizers announced in February 2017 that the event would return later that year — "This is too important not to continue," Shade said at the time —  they pulled the plug for good six months later, a week after Dakessian filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

The event would not live to see its 30th anniversary in 2017 and remained silent this year, as well.

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Pumpkin' Chuckin'

WHEN: Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.

WHERE: Big Chill Surf Cantina, 19406 Del. 1, near Rehoboth Beach

COST: $10 to compete. Admission is free.

HOW TO REGISTER: Go to eventbrite.com and search for Pumpkin' Chuckin' in Rehoboth Beach.

Further reading: 

Punkin Chunkin canceled in light of pending lawsuit

Woman injured at Punkin Chunkin files federal lawsuit against Delaware officials, organizers

Lack of funding may squash Punkin Chunkin