July 4th

On July 4th, Kester, his girlfriend and I headed out to Coney Island early to watch the traditional Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition. We got there alittle bit after 1o3o and the street was packed already.

It was very sunny and humid, there were fences along the street making the crowd more crowded.

We decided to try out Nathan's Famous Hot Dog (yes, I am a vegetarian, but wanted to taste their beef hot dog to understand the whole excitement of eating their "famous" hot dog).

After eating our hot dogs, we decided to work our way through the crowd - it was literally crazy! We had to go far to the end so that we could see at least two or three of the competitiors sitting due to the most facked up sport layout in history.

The table where the competitors were eating was located right in front of a sloped stage where the cameras for tv channels were. The camera stage was located between the crowd and competition table, making it almost pointless for the crowd to be present.

We had to stand for approcimately two hours until the competition started. The contestants came up and gave the crowd their show while freebies were being thrown out.

The contest was dominated by the defending championship who is from Japan and an American guy who ate 5o hot dogs during the qualifying round. The Japanese guy ended up consuming 53.75 hot dogs while the American counterpart did 52 hot dogs. All that was over in 12 minutes!

After the competition we walked along the beach - the beach did not look as beautiful as the one near Christine's place. We went through some carnival rides before heading to the Apple cube store. We had dinner at a Vietnamese place along the Korean street near Penn Station before Kester and his girlfriend headed back to New Jersey.

I headed back home and decided that I had been in enough crowds that day so simply watched the Macy's fireworks on TV.

Coming soon... The weekend and the World Cup.