Bits of regurgitated chicken wings hurl at full force onto the rusty red gravel of Dunn Tire Park, home of the minor league baseball team the Buffalo Bisons, as Adam Okonczak forces Tabasco-flavored acid upwards into an encore appearance. Taking a cue from Nicole Richie’s playbook, Okonczak shoves his plump finger down his worn esophagus, allowing another round of tangy poultry to rematerialize.
As Okonczak heaves behind what would normally be home plate, “The Star Spangled Banner” booms across the stadium and a stunningly short man in a tan seersucker suit, flat brimmed hat, and red bow tie enthusiastically shouts, “Eat!”
On his command, ten competitive eaters from all over the country hunch over their aluminum trays and start devouring their “Buffalo Buffet Bowl,” eight pounds of Buffalo’s finest culinary treats. Chicken wing shrapnel and beef on weck detritus flies into the hazy humid afternoon air and speckles the rosy, sun-kissed cheeks of the spectators in the front rows. The cheering just keeps getting louder.
Gluttonous Glory
Competitive eating is the fastest growing sport in the nation, according to research results reported by Major League Eating (MLE), the sports franchise that manages all of the professional competitive eating events in the United States. The growth is apparent here in Buffalo. Labor Day weekend brought hordes of people from all across the country to Dunn Tire Park in downtown Buffalo to celebrate the Sixth Annual National Buffalo Wing Festival, and from the observation of the crowds, it was the four competitive eating contests that really drew people in. “There’s something funny about watching people covered in blue cheese,” says Ed Bittner, a three-year festival veteran. Bittner drove to Buffalo from Lowell, Massachusetts, a nine-hour drive.
According to the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), informal eating contests date back to prehistoric times, citing that “thirty hungry Neanderthals in a cave fighting over a rabbit” represents the very beginning of competitive eating. Due to the popularity of pie-eating contests and other displays of timed gurgitation becoming popular at festivals and fairs across the U.S, the IFOCE was formed in 1997. The Federation unifies rules, regulations, and safety precautions of timed eating, as well as keeps track of all the records set by competitive eaters. And in the world of competitive eating, it seems new records are set every day.
George Shea, chairman of the IFOCE, considers Buffalo’s Wing Fest to be the Super Bowl of competitive eating, and knows the implications of victory extend far beyond a mere handshake and trophy.
“There is no competitive eating contest more elegant than the Buffalo Wing contest and no victory more important,” said Shea in an August 24 entry on the IFOCE website. “The essence of the human struggle to survive is on display in Buffalo on Labor Day weekend.”
In line with Shea’s enthusiasm, a new official world record was set on Saturday September 1, 2007. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, 39, a world renowned competitive eater, devoured 173 chicken wings in 12 minutes, which amounts to 5.17 pounds of meat, beating her previous record of 162 wings from two years ago. Her long black hair shone in the afternoon sun as she raised her trophy and smiled, seemingly unaware that she just ate roughly the equivalent of an entire chicken. She completely wiped out her competition to claim the title of National Buffalo Wing Festival Wing Eating Champion, and then went to eat some more, since she was still hungry.
Small But Mighty
Judging by appearances, Thomas doesn’t look like a competitive eater; in fact she looks as if the gusty Buffalo wind might actually blow her right out of the ballpark. At five foot five and 105 pounds, Thomas is one of the smallest competitive eaters in the world. Originally from Kunsan, South Korea, Thomas immigrated to Virginia and took a job with a Burger King in Maryland, where she is still a manager. She first got into competitive eating at the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating contest in Coney Island on July 4, 2003. She ate 18 hot dogs in the qualifiers and went on to eat 25 in the final, setting a new record for female eaters. She currently holds over 26 eating titles and won over $ 60,000 in prize money in 2006, as reported by the IFOCE.
Thomas chalks up her success to her love of food, fast hands, and dedication. “I like my wings, I can use my hands, they’re very fast,” she says. Thomas prepares for each competition year round, and competes ten to twenty times a year. She prepares by getting hungry. “I drink a lot of liquid with my meal while I’m eating to stretch my stomach. I drink about 42 ounces. I like Diet Coke, I drink about three or four with my meal. Basically, I train every day,” she explains.
What Goes Down Must Come Up
Thomas isn’t the only competitive eater to use large amounts of liquid to help stretch the stomach and enlarge its capacity. According to an article printed by The London Independent on June 17, 2006, many competitive eaters partake in “water training,” which entails drinking an entire gallon of water in 30 seconds. While a popular tactic used by Thomas, Eric “Badlands” Booker, and even Buffalo native and amateur wing champion Adam Okonczak, the IFOCE doesn’t endorse training at home of any kind. They maintain that “competitive eating is only safe in a controlled environment,” such as a competition, and warn that consuming too much water can lead to water intoxication and can possibly be fatal.
The IFOCE also has a strict policy on puking, known in the competitive world as a “reversal.” If it’s done during the competition, the competitor is disqualified. Once the competition is over the eaters are allowed to do whatever they want with the massive amount of food they just consumed. Professionals like Thomas and Booker know how to keep their food down and stable, while others have a bit of trouble. Okonczak, a Buffalo police dispatcher who won the amateur wing-eating contest in 2005 and 2006, as well as the hog wing competition in Newstead, employs this tactic after every contest. After eating epic portions of chicken wings (last year it was 3.2 pounds in 8 minutes), Okonczak sticks his finger down his throat. “You kind of have to,” he says, “I didn’t once and I paid for it.”
The IFOCE doesn’t directly admonish the act of purging or suffering from a “Roman Incident” after a competition, but they do advise the eaters to be cautious, warning that too much reflux can damage the esophagus and wear away tooth enamel.
‘Hungry and Focused’
Eric “Badlands” Booker, 37, is all too familiar with getting sick after binge competition eating. After ten years of competing nationwide, he’s had his share of regurgitating mishaps. “My worst physical reaction probably was when I was chewing gum before a contest and that was the wrong thing to do. Gum creates gas inside your stomach so I was eating hot dogs and I got to like 25 and I just couldn’t get anymore. I was like ‘Ohhhhh!’ and I hit the wall,” he reveals.
Booker is one of the most well-known faces of competitive eating. A Long Island native, he was one of the first people to sign on with MLE professionally. He signed up for a local hot dog-eating contest and ended up meeting George Shea, who immediately recruited him after seeing him eat.
Weighing in at 420 pounds, Booker is definitely a heavyweight, but is currently retired from the competitive circuit. Booker has been paying attention to competitive eater Ed Krachie’s “band of fat” theory, which states that people with more fat around their abdomen have a harder time expanding their stomachs. “One of my goals is to drop some weight and step my game out,” he says, “because once guys like Joey Chesnut and Sonya Thomas increased their game, and with all the new cats coming in, I’m taking it back to the drawing board, starting from scratch.”
Band of Fat
The “band of fat” theory was originally proposed by competitive eater Ed Krachie, who wrote a paper on the subject called “Can Abdominal Fat Act as a Restrictive Agent on Stomach Expansion? An Exploration of the Impact of Adipose Tissue on Competitive Eating.” His theory, however, was rejected by many scholarly journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, but in 2003, Popular Science published an article saying, “The size of the stomach at rest is inconsequential. All that matters is the stomach’s ability to expand, to adapt itself to the amount of food being shoved down the esophagus. A skinny man’s stomach has little fat to push against it and fight the food for space.” So, in the end it’s the eater’s choice what they choose to believe.
If the eaters at Buffalo’s Wing Fest were concerned about the girth of their bellies, they didn’t let on. The competitors were all shapes and sizes ranging from petite Sonya Thomas to 300-pound adult men in tie-dye pants resembling Hulk Hogan. It’s the diverse competitors that draw such an eclectic crowd to competitive eating events according to IFOCE.
All You Can Eat
For the chicken wing aficionados who prefer to eat less meat than the weight of a kitten, there was plenty in stock at the Buffalo Wing Fest. Although the stands were empty, the field was packed with patrons from around the country, walking around with a chicken wing in one hand, beer in the other, and faces full of barbecue sauce. The immense crowd of all shapes and sizes sweated out 82-degree weather and long lines for a common love of the spicy three-ounce indulgence.
Elvis impersonators wailed and the Jumbotron flashed chicken wing images as more than 30 local and national chicken wing vendors showcased their work. Flavors like cranberry chipotle and spicy Cajun offered creative alternatives to the traditional hot, medium, and mild sauce. At an event where a one-dollar ticket bought two chicken wings, it isn’t surprising that 74,000 junk food connoisseurs arrived on their long weekend for the deep-fried delicacy.
“We’ve come every year since it started, even last year when it was raining. I really like eating chicken wings, and I feel like I’m helping local businesses,” said North Tonawanda resident Troy Baker. --
“I just want some damn good wings,” said University at Buffalo student Megan Alo.
Luckily for Baker and Alo, festival founder Drew Cerza narrowly avoided a crisis when the event ran out of wings and other supplies. Cerza reported that as of 11 p.m. Saturday night, there was no oil, chicken wings, or paper products left in Dunn Tire Park. On that day alone, attendees had consumed 15 tons of chicken wings, the equivalent of last year’s entire stock.
“Late in the day on Saturday we realized that we blew through the whole 15 tons of chicken wings. We had to scramble to food suppliers, pizza parlors, anybody that would help, and managed to scrounge up 12 more tons of wings,” said Cerza. “It’s hard to believe but we went through half a million wings last weekend.”
Buffalo Wing Pride
About five years ago, on just an average Friday afternoon, Cerza was scanning The Buffalo News when he came across a story about the Warner Bros. flick Osmosis Jones. The movie, starring Bill Murray, featured a slovenly, lazy man on par with Homer Simpson, who pined to attend a fictitious chicken wing festival in Buffalo. After reading columnist Don Esmonde’s editorial about the possibility of such an event, the ambitious founder of food promotion agency RMI Promotions Group decided this idea might just be worth enacting. By Monday, he and Esmonde had a plan in motion.
“After I read Esmonde’s article in The Buffalo News I couldn’t help but think, ‘Wake up, Buffalo!’ California has a garlic festival, Wisconsin has a cheese festival, why can’t we have a wing festival?”
The first festival in 2002 drew a crowd of about 40,000 people, and has since nearly doubled. Cerza attributes this to the publicity that arose before the event, as well as the fact that he thinks it’s starting to be considered another culinary Buffalo tradition, along the lines of the Erie County Fair and the Taste of Buffalo. But stuffing one’s face has never felt so good—$10,000 was raised for Meals on Wheels, Food Bank of Western New York, and Variety Club this year alone.
Something for Everyone
With every great product comes innumerable accessories, and the chicken wing is no exception. Can’t fit a bulky chicken wing into the clear plastic cups provided with blue cheese? Then try the Wing Dipper, a plastic trough in the shape of a chicken wing promising to ensure maximum dipping space. Frustrated with having to walk to the trash can once the meat is gone off the wing? Then get the Sweet Daddy, a large bowl with a hole in the middle to dispose of leftover bones. The crowd must have craved convenience as much as they did barbecue sauce, because these products were a hit.
“This is the first time we’re selling them for personal use; up until now they’ve been exclusively for restaurants. I brought them in 80 packs to Buffalo, and they’ve been flying off the shelves,” said Wing Dipper inventor Aaron Foss.
Fans were served an after-meal treat when Eric “Badlands” Booker performed some of his new material. While planning his ESPN 2-worthy comeback, Booker has taken his competitive eating expertise into the music realm. He released three hip-hop albums, each coming out on Thanksgiving, and featuring a range of food consumption-related songs. “Be My Bunnette” is an ode to his belly-bearing groupies, or “bunnettes,” and “Eating Good” focuses on, well, eating good. Booker sells his music on iTunes and Myspace (www.myspace.com/badlandsbooker), as well as in CD form at music stores. He promises an eager public, “If you’re into ringtones, well, I’ve even got a few of those, too.”
Miss Buffalo Wing 2006 also made an appearance both days, and spent the weekend wandering the festival receiving congratulatory shouts of praise from fans. While this seems admirable, it’s worth noting that Miss Buffalo Wing 2006 is a tall, burly male who proudly wore his crown and sash. And the festival princess traveled all the way from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to do this.
Although the Wing Fest’s official website states that, to enter the Miss Buffalo Wing contest, entrants must be “at least 18 years of age, female, single, and not pregnant,” Drew Cerza allowed Dan Higgins to enter last year, since it was pouring rain and he was dressed as a bride (his sister was a groom and his brother was a priest). Prior to this, Higgins had attended as a baby in a big diaper and Lil Bo Peep. To Higgins, a celebrity and comedic figure 450 miles from home, it’s all in good fun.
“It’s kind of embarrassing. All kinds of people shout, ‘You were that guy two years ago! I remember you,” said Higgins. “But we have a good time, and isn’t that what it’s all about, having a good time?”
With often disappointing sports teams, poorly planned city development, and weak economic policies, it may not seem that Buffalo has much to boast. But the National Wing Festival proved that this charismatic city still has one original treasure with enough appeal to bring together world famous athletes, prominent restaurant owners, and thousands upon thousands of attendees. Even vegetarians and non-chicken wing eaters have a reason to be present, for as Toronto resident Brian Patrick justifies his 90-minute drive, “I just wanted to look skinny for once in my life.”
Caitlin Tremblay is a sophomore English major and Features writer for Generation.
Jill Gregorie is a senior Political Science major and Features Editor for Generation.
