Coney Island, part of New York City, is famous in American literature and film. In "The Great Gatsby," Gatsby invites Nick to go to Coney Island, and in Clara Bow's 1927 silent film "It," the neighborhood's amusement park is practically a co-star. After 1950, though, waves of officials such as New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses looked down on the "tawdry" amusements that characterized the boardwalk area. They pulled strings to substitute tawdry housing projects that became gang havens.
Coney Island went through bad decades, but even bureaucrats can't take away the ocean, and the beachfront location has inspired some entrepreneurs to ignore planners' sandcastles and attempt to develop new small businesses and privately owned housing. The Nathan's contest is another kind of bottom-up competition: The first contest arose in 1916 when four immigrants agreed to judge who was the most patriotic by stuffing themselves with the most American of foods.
The contest then grew, an authentic piece of red-white-and-chew popular culture. It was fun to see last week the good humor of a crowd made up of many races and nationalities, polarized not by politics but by mock-fierce cheers for Kobayashi and chants of "USA, USA" for Chestnut, who won by eating 66 hot dugs and buns in 12 minutes, setting a new world record and winning $10,000 plus a mustard-yellow belt.
I'm not wild about competitive eating as a sport. When the announcer introduced one contestant as a direct descendant of Daniel Boone -- "He doesn't explore the woods, he explores the malls of America ... the paths to the food court" -- I wondered if we're making progress. But I do tend to applaud initiatives that do not demand government's heavy hand.
Marvin Olasky
Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of the national news magazine World. For additional commentary by Marvin Olasky, visit www.worldmag.com.
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