4th of July. Perhaps the biggest commemorative date for Americans. In New York there are simply hundreds of events going on at the same time, the hardest thing is to choose where to go.
In my search for what to do this holiday, I called some friends from my college, and they gave me an interesting idea:
«Karsion, you who represented for 2 years the civil engineering of our school in the university food championships, are you going to pass up the opportunity to meet your biggest idols?»
Indeed, how could I not have thought of that?! I’ve been following Matt Stonie’s YouTube channel for years, and always wanted the opportunity to see something like this live. So I did it, I went to Coney Island to witness the world’s largest food competition: Nathan’s!For those who don’t know, this is a championship that has more than 100 years of history.
The challenge is to eat as many hot dogs as possible in under 10 minutes. If you have never seen this championship, try to guess what is the record of this competition. 20 hot dogs? Maybe 30? If you think absurdly and consider that someone eats 1 hot dog in 10 seconds, then 60 would be the record? As absurd as it may seem, the competition record is 76 hot dogs! No, I did not make a mistake when writing here, it is a surreal number.
Anyway, I arrived at Coney Island expecting to have a few dozen people watching, after all this is not a sport you see every day, is it? I couldn’t have been more wrong, an entire street was packed with spectators. There must have been 2000 people there, something impressive.
To my disappointment, Matt Stonie did not participate in Nathan’s this year, but I was not unhappy. It was a very good experience, and I think I enjoyed my 4th of July very much.
