New York -Coney Island &Hot Dog Eating Comp

Though only 30mins by train from Brooklyn, Coney Island was like entering another country. There were crowds and crowds of people, a lot of them South American. Latin music blared from stereos and you couldn’t hear any English. The people and beach umbrellas extended as far as the eye could see. People had set up their own food stalls on the pier selling mangoes on a stick or plates of rice and chicken covered in glad wrap (chicken in 32 degree heat with no refrigeration – fancy a dose of botulism anyone?) We probably chose a bad day to go, 4th of July is probably their busiest day of the year. I was grateful to be able to buy some chilled watermelon pieces instead of a greasy piece of pizza or cheese fries but after watching Nathans Hotdog Eating Competition Warren had built up an appetite for a hotdog. The queues at Nathans were astounding. A Nathans hot dog must be pretty good because the queue for one of these was probably 30minutes long in sweltering heat whereas at the hot dog vendor next door you could walk right up to the counter. (Those are the queues in the photo below).

Coney Island has been described as the poor mans Disneyland with arcade games, rollercoasters and rides. It was totally packed and the streets were a mess. Rubbish overflowed bins and spilled out onto the gutters. It was sweltering and sweat dripped from you when simply standing still.

While on Coney Island, we joined 20000 others to watch the ‘sport’ of competitive eating. Fortunately, most of the crowd were South American so I towered over most of them and got a pretty good view of the competitors stuffing their faces with American hot dogs. For a competitive eating competition, I was expecting to see a line up similar to what you might see at a Sumo Wrestling competition so was surprised to see the reigning champ, Takeru Kobayashi, looking like he would be more in place doing Kung Fu than Sumo.
The commentary to this event was as entertaining as the event itself, full of over-the- top cheesiness that had the crowds in groans and laughter. “Joey isn’t doing this competition for himself, he’s doing it for his country”, “This is the most intense and close competition ever to be witnessed in the history of man”. Below is the ESPN account of the events.

NEW YORK -- A 73kg wonder from Japan set a new record by devouring a sickening 53¾ frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.
The feat earned Takeru Kobayashi, 27, his sixth straight title in the event, held at the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand on Brooklyn's seashore.
He broke his own record of 53½ hot dogs, set at the same competition two years ago.
Thousands of raucous spectators jammed the streets in front of the hot dog stand, a block from the famed Coney Island boardwalk, to watch the competition and Kobayashi -- a top-ranked eater who once ate 17.7 pounds of pan-seared cow brains to win $25,000.
His strongest competition was Joey Chestnut, a 220-pound civil engineering student from San Jose, Calif., who set an American record by eating 50 hot dogs during a qualifying tournament in Las Vegas.
Chestnut jumped out to an early lead in the competition, sometimes jamming franks into his mouth with two hands as the crowd roared.
But Chestnut struggled, red-faced, with veins bulging in his forehead, the Japanese star methodically chomped dog after dog, often dipping them in a soft drink before cramming them into his mouth. Kobayashi passed Chestnut with about three minutes left in the contest.