All photos by Henry Miller for Bushwick Daily

“It’s little dicks, not micro-penis,” the reporter from Gothamist was told outside of Kings County Saloon just before the event started. And it seems that the distinction between the two is what makes Brooklyn’s Smallest Penis Pageant what it is: a little joke with a lot of pride.

This was the third year for Brooklyn’s most idiosyncratic and irreverent pageant, and based on the crowd that was lining up to pay $10 to see some small dick (when a few probably could have just stayed home and looked in a mirror), it was an outstanding success.

Once again, Kings County Saloon was selling “Penis Coladas” with plastic dick straws to the 100+ crowd of mostly women, many of who seemed pretty eager to be close to the stage when the little fellers made their big debut. When resident drag Queen Chicken Bitches, dressed in her finest, most sparkly and cumbersome Jedi attire (this year was Star Wars themed), asked the audience if they were here to hate or celebrate, they exuberantly shouted, “celebrate!”

Seriously, why doesn’t every bar in Brooklyn have a resident drag Queen? There are certainly enough of them living here. The only answer that I can come up with is that every bar owner and manager in the borough are well aware that no Queen can MC like the witty, cheeky and downright hysterical Chicken Bitches.

After Chicken Bitches warmed up the crowd, out came the competitors in see-through tuxedo-speedos. Two of them were returning for a second shot at the crown, a Mr. Rip Van Dinkle and The Puzzlemaster. The former won the first pageant, whereas the latter was a close runner-up last year. The other contestants, a well-tatted and rotund Chino Loco, the shy and endearing Gentleman and the Tecate-wielding Cromwell all seemed to have a shot at the title when the show started, but after the introductions and pageant walks, it seemed like the bout could only favor one man: The Puzzlemaster.

From the start he brought a flair and confidence that the other contestants struggled to deliver. He had a handful of jokes (last year he lost only by the “smallest margin”), and went all out during the cocksplash segment, when one lucky young woman was invited onstage to spray the dancing contestants with a squirt gun. I knew better from last year than to get too close to the stage. The Puzzlemaster also killed it with a Shirley Bassey cover renamed, “Golddinger.”

So when the Puzzlemaster was crowned and handed the scepter (a toy light-saber tipped with a plastic dick) along with $500 in cash, few people could be surprised. True, The Gentleman delivered a heartfelt poem that made the ladies in the crowd swoon, Chino Loco presented a hilarious and deeply traumatizing striptease in a Stormtrooper outfit, Rip Van Dinkle dropped a poorly timed but amusing rap, and Cromwell killed it with a Braveheart-level rousing speech about orgies in America, but nobody delivered the sincerity and cocksured-ness of The Puzzlemaster.

Confidence, it seems, is truly the key to winning the hearts of Ameri- er- Brooklyn.

Chino Loco