NEW YORK IS IN MY TUMMY - WELL, NOT EXACTLY ...

Most of you probably already knew that Joey Chestnut won the 2011 Nathan Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest took place in Coney Island on Monday, July 4th. In the female category was Sonya Thomas, winning the first ever Women's Championship. Chestnut claimed his 5th straight championship. Go to www.nathanfamous.com for more details about this American tradition. The next contest will be on Wednesday, July 4, 2012. So start practicing chowing down as many hot dogs as you could in 10 minutes if you wish to be a contestant :)

I took these photos last Thanksgiving (2010) when my husband insisted that we must have a Nathan's Famous dog for lunch. Well, CP had the dog and I could only have a cheese fries. I don't know what happened but I could no longer consume hot dogs. It started about 10+ years that I would have stomach ache, vomitting and spending time in the bathroom after eating a hot dog. I thought it was just that one time but after the third time getting so sick, I decided it would be best to "pass the dog" to others.

While we were standing in line waiting to place our order, a man in his late 50s, walked thru the door and stood behind us. His light blue shirt had a few stains, his white pants seemed to be on its last wash and his shoes were covered with all kind of industrial paints. He wore a faded Yankees hat that was hard to tell what the original color was. I pulled my purse closer to my body and gave my husband a "be careful, watch out for this guy" look.

The line moved quickly with three employees taking orders. Then we heard someone said, "Here, you could have this." The man I tried to guard my purse against offered us the coupon for $2 off. We thanked him for the coupon. The man placed his order to go and waited while we sat down at a table in the corner. I watched the "nice" man walked out into the busy streets of Coney Island with his lunch. My husband gave me the "Be careful - Don't judge the book by its cover" look.

TOTA IN NEW YORK CITY

How appropriate to see the survey (photo below) and the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, “Guests (or out-of-town relatives), like fish, begin to smell after three days”, while we were waiting for our flight back to St. Louis after spending 6+ days visiting my family in NYC. We enjoyed quality time with the family but it was always good to be home. I was sure that everyone was glad to have things back to normal after our stay.
Our flight from St. Louis on Tuesday, November 23rd was sort-of smooth flying. It was not crowded at Lambert International Airport when we left St. Louis. We experienced turbulence but it was not a major “shake-up”. We actually arrived at the gate about 20 minutes before scheduled landing. LaGuardia Airport was not as busy either. We knew that tomorrow, Wednesday would be different as it would be the day before Thanksgiving, a historically most travelled day. My brother, VL, picked us up and it was much appreciated. Later we had a nice dinner, delivered to the house from Tay Ho Vietnamese restaurant.

The next morning, after we took JL to school, we stopped by McDonald for breakfast. I noticed that most of the old men that used to hang out at a local Italian bakery, were now spending their time at McDonald. The bakery closed almost two years ago when the owners decided that they had enough and moved to Florida (well, it was a long story!).

One of items on our “wish list” was to get a Nathan’s hotdog (well, it was on my husband’s list. For some unknown reasons, I could no longer digest hotdog and would get sick for a day or two after eating one.) We took the D train to Coney Island, walked around the boardwalk (it was a bit windy and cold) and then to Nathan’s. It was crowded when the lunch rush started. More photos of Nathan’s in future post.

After Coney Island, we took the Q train to Times Square. We thought we could try to get tickets for a Broadway show. We did not really search for a particular show but most of them were sold-out since it was a holiday season with lot of tourists in town. We purchased tickets to see Wicked on Saturday.

Seeing the Freedom Towers was on my husband’s wish list, so after Times Square, we took the E train to the World Trade Center. We walked around the area and watched the construction workers leaving the site since it was already almost 4:00 p.m.

From the World Trade Center, we walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then it was time to take the #7 train to Flushing to meet up with my friend, MG and her family for dinner.

We did not get together when I visited last year, so it was 2 years since we saw each other. MG’s daughter, TA, picked us up and drove us to their house, about a few miles from the subway station. How time flies! It seemed just yesterday that TA was born and now she would be graduating from college. We went to a “punky” Korean restaurant. This large bow of seafood was one of the special items featured on the menu. After dinner, we all got into the van and MG took us back to Brooklyn.

It was our first full day in NYC and I felt so at home. You could take a New Yorker out of New York, but you could never take NY out of a NYer’s heart!

THE CYCLONE IN CONEY ISLAND

The Cyclone, a cultural icon of Coney Island, always evokes a sense of nostalgia, of wonderful childhood memories and excitement in grown-ups. According to The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn, the Cyclone dates from 1927, and is the last working roller coaster and one of the few wooden roller coasters in America. I never was fond of roller coasters. The one time I went on a ride at a park in Michigan in 1991, I bit my lower lip so hard that by the end of the ride it was bleeding and I had to be taken to the First Aid station. I could not talk for the rest of the day and even today my husband still remembers as the most peaceful and nicest day in our 20 years of marriage!

Coney Island = Amusement Park, Thrilled Rides and bumper car-ing at the Eldorado Auto Skooter. Riders must be 42 inches tall to get behind the wheel.

Not for the faint of heart, a ride on the Cyclone will keep the riders on the sidelines 180-degree turns 6 times, 12 drops from 85 feet at a 60-degree angle, 16 changes of direction and 27 evalation changes. It definitely would not be a pretty sight if I dared to go on a ride, especially after eating a Nathan's Famous dog.

NATHAN'S FAMOUS - CONEY ISLAND

Standing at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenue, Nathan's Famous looked exactly the way I remembered seeing it for the first time in 1982 when we visited Coney Island, two years after we came to America. I was never able to taste the famous franks because they did not agree with my digestion system. You don't want to know how my body reacted, it is not pleasant!

Together with fireworks, Fourth of July also brings in Nathan's hot dogs eating contest. It is an international event since 1996 and the winners were usually rail-thin Asian persons, or even women, who would down more than 50 hot dogs in less than 15 minutes. However, last year and again this year, the winner is Joey Chestnut, an American competitive eater (I did not know there is such title) who ate 68 dogs with buns in 10 minutes, breaking his own records of 66 dogs with buns in 12 minutes in 2008. My stomach hurts just from typing about this event.

Legend has it the contest began in 1916, when four immigrants had a dog-off at Nathan's Famous in Coney Island to settle an argument about who was the most patriotic. Neer Sehgal won that bout, eating 13 dogs in 10 minutes.Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/04/2009-07-04_nathans_.html#ixzz0Os0n4YJg

How appropriate to have a glass painting of a hot dog in a bun as part of the decoration of the subway station. Was that blue mustard or ketchup on the dog?

HOTELS & THEATRE - CONEY ISLAND

I took these photos of the Shore Hotel because I thought the abandoned building looked interesting being covered up with colorful painted boards and kind of pretty in a sad way, like an old woman who tried to dress up in a faded fancy evening grown and heavy make-up without any place to go or hopelessly waiting to be invited to a party. According to the blog Vanishing New York, the building will soon be replaced with a high rise. I am glad I took these photos.

I could not find much information on Google about this building with the sign Terminal Hotel. But I found another neat website, www.forgotten-ny.com.

Below are a few more photos of the Shore Theatre. I forgot to bring the book The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn with me but when I saw the SHORE sign, I knew this large 1920s building on Stillwell Avenue was special.

VANISHING CONEY ISLAND

During my most recent visit to NYC in May, I went to Coney Island and with a 2GB memory stick in the camera, I kept taking photos of whatever I thought was interesting. I am glad I did and thanks to the recent posts about Coney Island in Jemeriah Moss's blog, Vanishing New York - http://www.vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/ - I learned more about Coney Island and its historical importance to New York and American culture. Let's make it clear that I am not promoting Mr. Moss' blog or that he needed me to help with his well-known blog and already long list of followers. I enjoy reading Vanishing New York and it is one of my daily reading after, of course, Qaptain Qwerty. VNY gives me a sense of being in NYC and as Mr. Moss wrote, "A New Yorker is someone who longs for New York", and I am always longing for New York, my American hometown.

I hope Mr. Moss would not object that I "borrow" writing from his blog to provide "descriptions" to the photos I took. I took the above photo of the Shore Theatre but did not know until I read in VNY that "The Shore Theater, formerly known as the Loews Coney Island, is being considered for landmark status as the City revs up the bulldozers for Coney. “The architectural quality is every bit as wonderful as Broadway theaters that have received landmarking,” said Dick Zigun to Brooklyn Paper this week. “The city let us know they’re sympathetic to our request.”
Read Mr. Moss' VNY for more interesting stories about the museum (photo above). A post about Coney Island would not be complete without a photo about Nathan's Famous! (below photo)

Mr. Moss wrote about the building, Herman Popper Building, photo above- - - "It was built by brewer Herman Popper and his brother sometime between 1890 and 1906, first as a distillery and then as a tavern, says Forgotten NY. According to historian John Manbeck, via the Brooklyn Eagle, Popper opened the tavern on Surf Avenue "to better serve the Irish bars that sprang up on Coney Island’s Bowery, joining the German restaurants. Victorians crowded the streets, lubricated by a 'growler' or 'bucket of suds.' Irish waiters, who doubled as tenors, served a brew with a 'Coney Island head' on the beer—more suds than liquid—to unsuspecting rubes.'"

I am glad I took the photo below showing the street sign "Surf Avenue". It sure came in handy for this post.