July 4th

I spent this Independence Day at Coney Island with one of my girlfriends from school where we stood and watched the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest. The event was pretty cool. We get there and there are about 5 vegetarians hold sings saying like “MEAT = DEATH” and “Would you eat a hot dog if you knew it had a face”. Oddly enough, the picture of the animal on the second sign was a cow, but I guess when you want to make such a strong statement and create awesome signs, things get overlooked.

Before the contest started the MC announced that the competition would last 12 minutes. I thought to myself “Dang, I don’t think I can pay attention that long” but the event was really riveting. Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi had a real race going. It was neck-and-neck the entire time and they both broke the current record in the process. Joey, like, inhales the hot dogs. I don’t know how someone can do that without choking.

After the contest my friend and I got some food. The line at Nathan’s was extremely long so we went to some other stand where we each ordered a shish kabob stick and my friend got a corn dog. My friend is from Brazil and didn’t know what a corn dog was, but she ate it anyway and really liked it. After we ate we got some ice cream and walked around the Coney Island streets and the boardwalk. On our way back to the subway station we passed by the Nathan’s sign that lists all the contest winners since 1984. Earlier in the day the MC stated that 10 years ago the winner of the event usually ate around 24 hot dogs and that was a big deal. Now most of the participants have to eat at least that many to win their qualifier to make it to the final round. The sign we passed showed that in 1984 the winner only at 9 ½ hot dogs. That’s it. This year, Joey at 9 ½ hot dogs in about 55 seconds! That’s gross.