Life with a teacup pot-bellied pig is different.People yell things in your direction, like they did the other day at the corner of Wave and Prescott in New Monterey.
“It’s a guinea pig!” shouted some woman walking by.
An oblivious Bacon continued to sniff her way around the built-in brick planter, led by her little spotted scallop of a snout.
“No!” her male companion protested. “It’s a live pig!”
Some ask to hold her. Many want to pet her. Several swear they must have one of their own, zapping messages like one I got this week—“She is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute!!! I got to hold her, and now I want one!!"—after visiting with her. Others populate the air with sudden, spontaneous giggles of delight. Nearly everyone stops and stares.
Sitting in the temporary basement office beneath the Cannery Row Brewing Company, Sarah Potter, executive assistant to Coastal Luxury Management chiefs David Bernahl and Rob Weakley, has other things to report about her new existence with the 8-week-old piece of pork, once she’s reminded her listeners that she is a vegetarian surrounded by world-class meat eaters with political preferences that steer more NRA than PETA.
• Restaurant 1833 Chef Tim Mosblech likes to tuck her into his chef coat, and has made decisions on upscale flatware purchase only after modeling Bacon on them.• Though she’s scheduled to be specially trained to become service swine that ministers to the ill—and is already house-trained—she freaks when leashed, uncorking her porky ear-wringing scream.
• She loves to play with paper bags. And loves to eat Cheerios—but not as much as truffle fries from Mark Ayers’ kitchen up top. (She probably wouldn’t make a good truffle hunter like her full-size cousins in Europe.)
We made our own observations during our nearly impossible-to-end visit:
• As Weekly intern Ellen Huet punned, the girl’s a ham—she won’t stop trying to wiggle her nose into the camera lens (but then again, she nose-shoves everything in her vicinity with cute curiosity)—but squeals shrill protest when held next to thick cut bacon from the kitchen for a photo.
• She wags her tail like a dog, and a darn happy one at that.• While Bernahl and Weakley are quickly riding their celeb chef connections and new restaurants to their star status—and their upcoming Harvest Carmel food-and-farm festival recruited WAR and Gin Blossoms for even more rock star power—the Coastal Luxury team has a new leading luminary.
