Coney Island, in Brooklyn, is a toxic little sliver of a boardwalk. Everyone is yelling and shoveling overpriced grub into their gullets. The stage is set with men and women, who in a different time, would be the subject of oil paintings. These generous benefactors would’ve lived in a state of terminal lethargy and self-indulgence, in a home littered with gout stools for their bulbous, severely inflamed feet. Brooklyn artifacts of a previously ambulatory existence. But in our time, they are lauded, praised, and worshipped, represented, clearer than any other individual, what it means to be human. There, in full display of cameras and an adoring, slavering public, they wolf down as many cylinders of tubed meat they can, symbols of Man’s digestive irregularities.
The tryst between Brooklyn and Joe Chestnut has been no summer fling. It’s been long and sordid. It always struck me as strange that for a man famous for guzzling processed meat product of an indeterminate origin has the distinction of being named after a rather healthy nut. The romance began fittingly with an outrageous number of hot dogs, when the young glutton announced to himself through wet bits of half-chewed buns, “All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, ‘There goes the greatest eater who ever lived.’”
Even heroes get bored with their gifts after an extended period of dominance. It explains why Joey Chestnut has opted for a different variety of tubed meat, after having consumed the traditional blend more than any man on earth. He needed a new challenge with a new vegan hot dog. Chestnut is merely the latest in a long line of geniuses forsaking their greatest talent for something fresh. If Keith Richards can give up drinking, then Chestnut can embrace the plant-based arts.
Whatever residue of second-hand nitrates that remain, my relationship with Chestnut came quite late. Like many, I first came to understand his gifts in contrast to his main rival, Kobayashi. The man he faced off with on Labor Day, nowhere near the salt air of Kings County either. The two met in an undisclosed location, fit for a Netflix streamer. Las Vegas is not where these two men belong. These two Tarrares of towering consumption met inside a hotel for a ten-minute romance. It wasn’t Coney Island. It wasn’t where they became stars.
For me, Chestnut is the classic eater who doesn’t care about the mustard-stained napkin difference between something natural and something not. He never asked anyone in charge what’s exactly in a hot dog? Is it healthy? Then again, at that quantity, what is? No, he shoveled, he chomped, he guzzled. He did so because the crowds kept coming back, growing larger and larger, mirroring his distended belly and breathtaking lack of shame.
He's left a funny taste in the public’s mouth for years. Popping up a few times and then disappearing into obscurity. Where he goes, what he does on days not July 4th is something most people would care not to think about. We don’t know what he’s like at dinner, and we don’t want to know. It would ruin our sense of myth and his own mystique to see the man many calls J.C. politely polishing off a normal size dish and a dim restaurant. People still want to know what’s next. This can’t be it. Can it? But they won’t get a response. Not from him, and not directly.
Because Gods do not answer text messages, they vomit into large slop buckets backstage while a production assistant holds their hair.
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