For a moment, it seemed like Dev Patel himself was parting the sea of people that filled the slopes of Dolores Park on Sunday.
“Is it him?” spectators murmured. A hush fell over the crowd.
A man with windswept brown curls casually emerged onto the makeshift runway, holding a canned cold-brew. He raised one hand in greeting, and gave the audience a polite nod.
“I’m sorry for being so late,” he said, joining the line of other dark-haired men. “The flight from London takes about 18 hours.”
Adoring spectators screamed.
This man wasn’t Dev Patel, the award-winning British actor whose credits include “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” He was Jaipreet Hundal, a Bay Area software engineer — “typical brown guy,” he shrugged — and a contestant in perhaps the most San Francisco election of them all: A Dev Patel lookalike contest.
The event, which drew hundreds, was organized by a group of friends inspired by the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest held last month in New York City’s Washington Square Park. While Chalamet did make an appearance at his competition, the Dev Patel organizers said they had no expectations that the actor would show.
When co-organizer Sitara Bellam made a flier for the contest at 1 a.m. a couple of weeks ago, she intended it as a joke among friends. They had originally wanted to host a Robert Pattinson contest but “I didn’t think that we have enough attractive people in San Francisco,” Bellam said. Plus, she continued, there’s more of a “demographic for Dev” here.
Indeed; a hundred people RSVPed, and even more showed up.
“The city yearns for things like this,” said Tasnim Kahndakar, another organizer who emceed the event that she described as “a Timothée Chalamet contest for people of color.”
Before the contestants lined up to make their formal pitches to the audience through a neon-green bullhorn, they were given a chance to mingle.
“Pander if you must,” Khandakar instructed. “The audience knows what they want from Dev Patel.”
Pander they did. “Dev Patel is a state of mind,” said some contestants who, admittedly, lacked much physical resemblance.
“Anyone can be a Dev Patel,” Sean F. said. “It’s not a person. It’s a feeling.”
The 20 contestants entered with varying degrees of preparation. Some learned about the event days ago, others just hours beforehand. One stumbled upon it while he was grabbing a coffee, and stuck around. Sudev Namboodiri, an improv actor, drove two hours from Sacramento, where he had gone to the hair salon with a photo of Dev Patel the day before.
Prad Magal trimmed his beard in the hope of getting “bragging rights for the rest of my life.” Others, like Rothanak P., were just there to meet other people who look like him. Arthi Vaidyanatham said she was competing “for female representation.”
Enthusiastic audience members also came with their own agendas. Kahndakar told them to “make some friends, make some lovers.” They obliged.
Julianne Uganiza wove through the crowd, taking selfies with contestants to send to her friend, a “baddie” who had just broken up with her boyfriend because he “wasn’t meeting her standards.”
Cole Yambrovich, meanwhile, sat cross-legged in the front row for the most intimate Patel viewing experience possible.
“No matter who wins the contest, I win, because I get to see all the Dev Patels,” Yambrovich said. “There’s too much hotness in one tent.”
It came down to two: The fashionably late Jaipreet Hundal and Arjun Sheth, who quickly set himself apart.
“My pitch to you is not going to be with words,” Sheth told the crowd. “It will be with dance.” He swept another contestant into a dip, did a split, and, in his final appearance, lifted up the bottom of his blank tank top. The spectators shrieked.
It was a tough act to follow, but Hundal did so with his signature nonchalance. Instead of taking clothes off, he slowly zipped up his brown jacket. The crowd began chanting, and the contest had been won.
Hundal was handed a check for $50 and a bouquet of flowers; Sahar Swaleh brought them because, she said, “guys don’t get them enough.”
In his acceptance speech, Hundal shouted out his girlfriend. There was a collective groan.
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