Tastes change, however. Urban masses move to the suburbs and buy air conditioners; new immigrants seek the comforts of their own traditional diversions. The beach is still there, but the place my grandfather and father used to visit exists only in sepia-toned photographs. Coney Island is a broken-down old man.
Yet there is one day of the year when Coney Island relives its former glory. On July 4, thousands of people gather on Surf Avenue to watch the annual hot-dog-eating competition, an American tradition dating to 1916. The contest apparently began when two immigrants got into a fight about which one of them was “more American.” To settle the dispute, the pair decided to see who could eat more Nathan’s hot dogs–a Coney Island classic and, of course, a most American of foods. The name of the patriotic winner has been lost to history, alas, but his feat has gone down in the record books of what is now an international sporting phenomenon.
Yes, I mean competitive eating. It’s often dismissed as the kitsch of state fairs, a stunt for restaurants needing a little publicity. Certainly, that was the image during the early years of the annual Nathan’s contest, as brewery workers, telephone-repair men, prison guards and other behemoths would belly up to the table and start stuffing hot dogs into their mouths for the benefit of the cameras. But then something–or, more accurately, someone–happened. In 1991 a former football player named Frank Dellarosa ate 21 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes.
Thanks to America’s robust free press, journalists like myself were able to widely disseminate the story of Dellarosa’s stunning “21 in ‘91,” as the feat became known. Newsmen from around the country covered his successful defense of his title the next year, as well as his subsequent loss to a brash, young 300-pound engineer named Ed Krachie. As everyone knows, Krachie was competitive eating’s Muhammad Ali–the man with a mouth so big that he could stuff 22 hot dogs and buns into it and still have room to brag. For three years in the early 1990s, Krachie was the darling of Coney Island, an American hero whose over-the-belt paunch and shameless ego captured the spirit of our nation.
But Krachie, like America, got lazy. Maybe he convinced himself that he could never lose, just as the country more recently convinced itself that the stock market only goes up. So perhaps it was inevitable that Krachie would lose. It’s who he lost to that hurts. Hirofumi Nakajima, a 145-pound wisp of a man from, of all places, Japan!
National pride being what it is, there was a celebrated rematch the next year, 1997. Again Krachie lost. A year after that, Krachie lost to the guy a third time. Ever since, July 4–America’s Independence Day–has become the day our country gets its butt kicked by a very thin Japanese man who can devour our principal culinary symbol faster than you can say California roll. In recent years, it’s been a 113-pounder named Takeru Kobayashi doling out the comeuppance. In 2001, he stunned the world–and etched his name alongside the likes of Cobb, Ruth, DiMaggio, Namath, Montana, Jordan, Gretzky and Woods in the annals of sports history–by eating 50 hot dogs and buns in those same 12 minutes. This year, he did it again.
Fifty hot dogs and buns! He didn’t merely break the previous record of 25, he publicly humiliated it, downing 13 pounds of beef and bun in the time it takes most Americans to drink their morning coffee. This stunning athletic achievement should’ve been a wake-up call for America. Instead, it seems, we hit the snooze button. Instead of rallying–as we did when the Soviet Union launched a La-Z-Boy-sized hunk of metal into orbit in 1957–America missed this generation’s Sputnik Moment.
Well, America is at another historic crossroads. Is there no one in this nation of 270 million people who can eat 51 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes? George Shea, president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, believes there is. He spends most of the year hosting contests around the country–a jalapeno-eating contest in Texas, an oyster-eating contest in New Orleans, a chicken-wing-eating contest in Philadelphia–in a desperate search for the American Kobayashi. “He’s out there, somewhere,” Shea told me. Maybe on some farm. Maybe he’s some kid in the inner city who doesn’t even realize that he has the gift. But I know he’s out there."
