Last Friday, on July 4, I went out to Coney Island for the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, in which the great Kobayashi was beaten for the second straight year by Joey Chestnut. I wanted to see what I could learn about the sport of competitive eating, and I learned quite a bit.
If all goes as planned, we’ll touch on the subject in SuperFreakonomics. In the meantime, here’s a picture I took of the contest aftermath, showing the floor of the stage where the contestants stood while chowing down.
If you look hard, you can see trace evidence of Kobayashi and Sonya Thomas, who did a good Q&A here in anticipation of the July 4 event. You can also see bits and pieces of dog and bun that may persuade you to you go vegan for a week or two.
