Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit

by Ryan Nerz

The Big Daddy of them All: Nathan’s Famous on the Fourth of July

  No man can hope to get elected in New York State without being photographed eating hot dogs at Nathan’s Famous.

  —Nelson Rockefeller, former New York governor

  Governor Nelson Rockefeller hands out hot dogs to a horde of hungry and focused New Yorkers at the Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand on Coney Island. (Courtesy of Nathan’s Famous, Inc.)

  The day that consumers nationwide have been waiting for has arrived—July 4, 2004, the 228th birthday of the United States of America. As noon approaches, the familiar last-minute preparations have begun. Across the nation, grills are being anointed with that first spurt of starter fluid; ice is being dumped on coolers filled with soda and beer. Grocery stores are flush with revelers stocking up on last-minute supplies—jumbo bottles of mustard and ketchup, buns, giant packs of ground beef, and, let us not forget, hot dogs. Today, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans will consume 150 million hot dogs.

  Twenty of the most committed hot dog eaters have gathered at the entrance of the Holiday Inn Wall Street, nervously awaiting the arrival of the Bus of Champions. The weather is ideal—eighty degrees and sunny with a slight wind, the sky a crystalline blue laced with wispy streaks of clouds. Don Moses Lerman, dressed head to toe in stars and stripes, is pacing back and forth. Oleg Zhornitskiy is sitting on a chair, looking bored. Dale Boone, Allen “Shredder” Goldstein, and Jammin’ Joe LaRue are chatting with a reporter, doing their best not to show their nerves.

  “You know there’s a bet,” Dale says.

  “What’s that?” Goldstein asks.

  “The one who comes in last place has gotta take everybody out.”

  Goldstein says he’s not planning on coming in last and hopes to beat his personal best of seventeen and a half. Dale boasts that he already did the deuce, the first year he tried. A reporter asks how he prepares. “I was raised like this,” Dale says, patting his belly. “Good old-fashioned Southern stomach.”

  “He’s gonna get the meat sweats,” Jammin’ Joe says. “That’s when the adrenaline enzymes mix with the meat enzymes, and your body loses all control.”

  Meanwhile, in Coney Island, a crowd is already forming around the stage on the corner of Surf and Stillwell, near the historic site of the Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand. Dozens of reporters have gathered in front of the stage and are setting up cameras and microphones. Across from them, on a raised platform, twelve tables are set up below a ten-foot-long, plastic Nathan’s Famous hot dog that hangs down as if suspended from the heavens. Fans have already taken their spots outside the barricades. A quick scan of the crowd reveals the polyglot character of Brooklyn—and of America—a land composed of immigrants. Among their ranks are tattooed hipsters with digital cameras, Brighton Beach Ukrainians who have been coming here each Fourth for years, and gaggles of chirping Japanese girls waiting for a glimpse of the great Kobayashi.

  To the side of the stage, a sign reads ERIC BADLANDS BOOKER FOR PRESIDENT. A reporter approaches a girl with headphones around her neck and a sign pinned to her shirt that reads GO KOBAYASHI! She tells the reporter she’s come all the way from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to get a glimpse of her favorite gurgitator. And what is it that she likes about Kobayashi?

  “He’s the best. Simple as that.”

  Back on the Bus of Champions, the eaters are exchanging predictions and talking about their role in the most famous eating contest in the world. Rich LeFevre says that he’s gotten fourth place the previous two years, that he wants to eat thirty today but would be happy with twenty-eight. “It’s the most difficult twelve minutes of my life,” says his wife, Carlene, sitting beside him. “Almost as difficult as the Great Wall of China, which I did a couple of years ago.” Regardless, Carlene says she’ll still be hungry after the competition and will likely eat ice cream to “fill in the nooks and crannies.”

  Allen Goldstein says his expectations aren’t high. He’s only been eating competitively for six months, and he got the coveted wild-card slot after getting second place in three qualifiers. “I’m honored to be on this bus competing with the world’s greatest eaters.”

  In the back of the bus, a group of three men and two women sit around a table, speaking Japanese. One man is noticeably taller than the rest, with a disproportionately large head and wire-rimmed glasses. He is Nobuyuki Shirota, known in Japan as the Giant, and in America as Godzilla. He’s the only eater in the world to ever defeat Kobayashi. When a reporter asks if he speaks English, he makes a gesture with thumb and forefinger. “A little bit,” Shirota says. According to Dave Baer, who picked up Shirota two days before from Newark Airport, his English is indeed limited. After attempting for a good thirty minutes to explain some urgent thought to Dave on the drive from the airport into the city, Shirota finally dug into his Japanese-English dictionary. “Thirsty,” Shirota announced. “I am very thirsty.”

  He is, however, able to answer the reporter’s question of how many hot dogs he plans to eat. “Uhhh…fifty!” Shirota says with a smile. The reporter turns his attention to a smaller Asian man with a boyish face who is blinking so obsessively you’d think he has Tourette’s. The reporter, clueless, asks his name. “Takeru Kobayashi.” When asked if he speaks English, Kobayashi shakes his head no and gestures to his interpreter, Robert Ikeda. The reporter asks Kobayashi how many he will eat today, and Ikeda interprets the question. Kobayashi stops blinking and confidently says something in Japanese.

  “He says he’ll eat fifty-two hot dogs,” Ikeda says.

  “We gather here under the wall of great men, at the Mount Rushmore of competitive eating, here at the Mount Sinai of Mastication, the sanctum sanctorum of eating, the Coliseum of competitive gurgitators. My friends, we are here where the alpha meets the omega and sends us forth, to go forth, on the Fourth of Julyyyyyyy!”

  George Shea is on his soapbox again. He’s doing what he does best, standing on a platform, one hand on the microphone, the other pointing into a cheering crowd, setting the stage for an eating contest. I, on the other hand, am terrified. I’ve spent the morning taping a live pie-eating contest for The Today Show, and my nerves haven’t recovered. Fortunately, with George Shea running the show, I know I won’t have to say much. George extends thank-yous to a slew of people. When he gets around to Mayor Bloomberg, the crowd boos. “They’re not actually booing, they’re just saying Blooomberg,” George says with a smile.

  After the singing of the national anthem, the Bus of Champions arrives. As the eaters run from the bus to the tent beside the stage, a.k.a. the bull pen, the crowd goes wild. The musical portion of the show begins. Waving his towel at the crowd, Badlands Booker performs “The Sweet Science of Competitive Eating” with the accompaniment of his son and Hungry Charles’s son. The Gowanus Wildcats, a dance troupe featuring eight adorable little girls from Brooklyn, perform a step show that’s so endearing that I nearly tear up with emotion. Amos Wengler, the bard of Brooklyn, who cites Lawrence Welk and Liza Minnelli as his inspiration, performs a couple of his folk standards with his guitar. “Hot dogs, hot dogs,” he sings. “Watch them eat ’em up….”

  I present the three Rookie of the Year candidates as if they were vying for an Oscar. “For excellence in the lunch-meat category, I present bologna-eating champion Allen ‘Shredder’ Goldstein.” George plays the “favorite songs” of each candidate. George and Shredder do a bizarre synchronized arm-pumping dance to “Sister Christian.” Buffalo Jim Reeves grooves out to Milli Vanilli. Sonya Thomas’s tune, inexplicably, is Dan Folgelberg’s “The Leader of the Band.” Sensing that he might be losing the crowd, George stops the ceremony to lead a rally cry. “Are…we…in…Brooklyn?” he asks.

  “Yeahhh!” the crowd answers.

  “Are we in the U…S…AAAAA?”

  The crowd goes bananas. Before I can even open the envelope that reveals the Rookie of the Year, fans are already shouting out, “Sonya! Sonya!” Gersh Kuntzman and Mike “the Scholar” DeV
ito present the trophy to Sonya, and then they make their predictions for the contest. When Gersh says he thinks one of the two Japanese eaters will win with somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five dogs, the crowd boos. George Shea thanks them and takes over, introducing the Nathan’s Famous mascot.

  “Ladies and gentleman, now I will invite onto the stage the Frankster, that flexible, multicolored, part-protein-based gangster. Last year, the Frankster actually danced with an oversized mustard bottle. And I believe that unnatural act set off a year of nontraditional marriages that embroiled this nation and may play a part in the election this November.” The Frankster waddles out and, at George’s request, does the “chicken dance.”

  “Remember, that’s not an actual hot dog, folks. That’s a person in a hot dog costume. And there’s no hip in the hot dog costume, and we all know that rhythm is in the hips. So for this person to be able to do the chicken dance…absolutely fantastic! It’s a moment of pure joy in our day.”

  George then introduces Wayne Norbitz of Nathan’s Famous, who will present a donation to a nonprofit hunger organization. Norbitz proudly announces that Nathan’s sold 360 million hot dogs in 2003, and that they would like to make a gracious donation of ten thousand hot dogs to City Harvest. A female representative thanks him for the “magnificent donation” and shakes his hand. “It will go a long way toward feeding the twenty-three million hungry in America today,” she says. I check her facial expression for sarcasm, but it’s inscrutable.

  Now it’s time to introduce the eaters, which means, back to the George Shea show. “Ladies and gentlemen, in the 1770s a man named Daniel Boone roamed the hills of Kentucky and Ohio and Pennsylvania, under an umbrella of a primal forest that stretched for miles. And now his great-grandson nine times over travels the endless strip malls of the Southeast in search of all-you-can-eat buffets and steak challenges.”

  Dale Boone takes the stage, ringing his cowbell. “You’re goin’ down Kobayashi,” he yells into the crowd. “You’re goin’ down!” I introduce Crazy Legs Conti, paying particular notice to his daring escape from a popcorn-filled sarcophagus. When George announces the arrival of the contestant from Germany, Markus Steinhof, who he claims is the “bratwurst-eating champion of Lower Saxony,” it’s my turn to ham it up.

  “Er ist der Schweinshaxeweltmeister!” I belt out. “Der groesste Fresser den ganzen Welt!”

  “Oh, that’s real German,” says George.

  “Yahh,” I say. “And this next eater is the number one hot dog eater in New Zealand. He arrived at South Street Seaport by hovercraft. Please welcome everyone’s favorite Kiwi gurgitator, Simon ‘the Siphon’ Hopewell!”

  Jammin’ Joe comes up, then Buffalo Reeves. I see that it’s my turn to introduce Hungry Charles, and I get psyched. “All I have to say about this next eater is, like George Shea and myself, he represents Brooklynnnn!” I bathe in the crowd’s dull roar. Hungry Charles makes a grand entrance to a thumping Biggie Smalls tune, his hair straightened and pulled back in a ponytail like Snoop Dogg back in his “Doggfather” days. “He’s the world cabbage-eating champ! The world shrimp-eating champ! They call him the Godfather on the circuit! Please welcome Hungry Charles Hardy!”

  George steps up. “Ladies and gentlemen, this next man has continued his journey toward victory despite a persistent neighborhood thief who has stolen all of the topiary shrubs from the front lawn of his Levittown home.” Don Lerman doffs his stars-and-stripes baseball hat to the crowd and glances back at George, looking slightly uncomfortable. “He has an extraordinarily intimate relationship with his mouth and alimentary canal, and he has named each of his teeth, men on top, females on bottom…it’s just good common sense. I give you the butter-eating champion of the world, Don Moses Lerman!” As Don approaches the table, George names off his teeth. “Jimmy, Johnny, Joey, Marky, Mikey, Matty, Timmy, Tommy, Tony, Ted, and Pedro. Mary, Martha, Maggie, Tisha, Taylor…”

  I introduce Ravenous Ron Koch, as an eater whose obsession with Nathan’s Famous dogs has spanned a half century. George describes Rich LeFevre as part of a rare competitive-eating breed known as the locust, “out in the hinterlands, eating only for themselves at the all-you-can-eat buffets and steak challenges.” The crowd begins to stir. In the distance, we can see him—Kobayashi, being carried through the crowd on a palanquin hoisted on the shoulders of four sturdy men. The crowd showers him with carnations. Kobayashi waves to the Coney Island faithful in a way that makes his Japanese nickname, the Prince, seem appropriate. “It is the master, the magician, the alchemist,” George says. “The man who has transformed poetry into mathematics, mathematics into science, science into art. It is the Tsunami…”

  Takeru Kobayashi gives love to the Coney Island faithful while being carried in his hot dog-shaped palanquin before the 2004 Nathan’s Famous contest. (Courtesy of Amy Esposito)

  Kobayashi gets as many boos as he does cheers. George introduces Nobuyuki Shirota as the three-time winner of Japan’s Food Battle Club, and the only human eater alive to have beaten Kobayashi. Shirota smiles hesitantly and raises a fist. He looks nervous and a little confused. Badlands, on the other hand, looks perfectly comfortable when I announce him. “Put your hands in the air and wave ’em side to side for one of New York’s finest!” Booker douses the crowd with the contents of his water bottle. He waves his towel and fake-bites at the crowd, and they eat it all up. I notice he’s wearing a necklace with a ring on it. In our Carnegie Deli interview, he explained how an eight-year-old girl named Romelie, who knew all about competitive eating, walked up to him at a Brooklyn movie theater and gave him her good-luck ring. It was plastic with green diamonds. In what sounded like a fairy tale, the little girl told him that if he wore the lucky ring, he would defeat Kobayashi and the Giant.

  George introduces Cookie Jarvis as “a man who has brought new meaning to the words athlete, champion…neighborhood Realtor.” Cookie, still the American-record holder with thirty and a half dogs and buns, is wearing his patented stars-and-stripes do-rag. George lists off a handful of Cookie’s titles, labeling him a “walking encyclopedia of triumph.” Sonya comes last. George introduces her in the most effective way, by listing her staggering records while the crowd looks at how tiny and female she is. Sixty-five hard-boiled eggs in seven minutes! Eleven pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes! Knowing that she’s got multiple inexact chicken-wing records, he picks a number between 130 and 150 for the amount she’s eaten in twelve minutes.

  Mike DeVito swears in the judges and lists the rules. The eaters go through their prematch rituals. Kobayashi, now wearing a floral-print baseball cap, adjusts his water and then stands there, blinking and staring into nowhere. Hungry Charles and Don Lerman lean into the table, narrowing their focus. Lerman keeps adjusting his hat. Crazy Legs plays with his dreadlocks and cracks his neck. Carlene LeFevre and El Wingador both sway from side to side, burning tension. Badlands does breathing exercises. George does the countdown. “We’re gonna start in four, three, two, one…go!”

  And they’re off. Specifically, Kobayashi is off. Knowing that George will do most of the talking during the first minute, I walk over and watch Kobayashi intently. He grabs two dogs (without buns) in his right hand and chokes them back in nine bites. Time elapsed: six seconds. Then he grabs two buns in both hands, shoves them in separate cups of water, and crams the soggy, crumbling remnants into his mouth. Seven seconds and it’s down. It is a spectacular sight that puts the world’s premier sword swallowers to shame. Kobayashi is a shaman, a magician, a wizard, and he seems to be channeling from the same otherworldly source as George Shea.

  “Feel the breeze here under the umbrella blue sky of the Almighty, the inverted crucible through which all of His bounty flows. And it looks as if the figure of the Almighty will come down. It will descend to anoint and initiate an eater here today, to transform them from the world of the living into the world of the mystical!”

  To Kobayashi’s left is Cookie Jarvis, who is eating at a damn respectable clip bu
t still looks like an outdated model in comparison. He takes two dogs in both hands, polishes off half a dog in three rapid-fire chomps, chews for a few bites, swallows, and then does the same with the other half. It is as Kobayashi has said—the Americans chew too much. On Cookie’s left, Shirota is rocking a technique I’ve never heard of before. He breaks both dog and bun into small segments, which he feeds into his mouth and swallows after minimal chewing. Of the twenty eaters, Markus Steinhof appears to be the only one eating dog and bun together in the traditional fashion.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are involved now in the very essence of human struggle.” At two and a half minutes, Kobayashi has seventeen. That’s seven dogs and buns a minute. Shirota is right behind him with fourteen. At the four-minute mark, Kobe has twenty-three and Shirota twenty-one. “From the eastern sky, we saw two thunderheads approaching,” George Shea announces. “One Nobuyuki Shirota, the other Kobayashi.”

  Techno music thumps. George keeps the crowd abreast of the American competition, which, at the five-minute mark is a four-way dogfight between Sonya, Badlands, Cookie, and Rich LeFevre, all hovering around fifteen dogs. I keep looking back at the signs held up by the Bun-ettes. The Bun-ettes, dressed in sequined stars-and-stripes vests and miniskirts, aren’t hard to look at. I tell the crowd to watch for the various styles of dancing—the Kobayashi shake and the Badlands shuffle. “Give it up for Badlands Booker!” I yell, already getting hoarse.

  “From the eastern sky, we saw two thunderheads approaching!” George Shea summons the Gods of Gurgitation while the eaters scarf down frankfurters. (Courtesy of Amy Esposito)

  Sonya sneaks glances at Kobayashi as she eats. She can’t match his pace, but perseveres anyway. “Ladies and gentlemen, I always thought that Ed Cookie Jarvis, Badlands Booker, and Sonya Thomas were the three horsemen of the esophagus,” says George. “But we are now witnessing some kind of force from the East here as Nobuyuki Shirota is pushing Kobayashi. And when the master is pushed, he responds by changing the forces that govern us all. Here is a man in whom the rules of the universe do not apply. And he is on his way right now. History, he can see it, like we can see the boardwalk.”