NYC NOW - July 4, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

It’s the 4th of July! WNYC’s Janae Pierre talked with Crazy Legs Conti, a competitive eater for 23 years, who appeared in 16 out of the past 23 hot dog eating competitions at Coney Island. Plus, how do you know the difference between the sound of fireworks and gunshots? WNYC’s Matt Katz has some answers.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WMYC, I'm Jenae Pierre. Happy Independence Day. This is our one and only episode today. Before you hit up that barbecue or safely light those sparklers, here's your news headlines. What does the 4th of July sound like to you? Music, people, family, fireworks everywhere. That's Jay Fernandez, a lifelong.

resident of Inwood in Manhattan. His neighborhood has one of the highest rates of noise complaints about fireworks citywide. That's according to a new WMYC analysis of 311 calls over the last three years. Washington Heights also led the city and fireworks complaints. In Brooklyn, Flatbush and Graves Inn stood out with 100 plus complaints apiece. Jackson Heights, Queens, and Annadale on Staten Island also shared that distinction. To see how your neighborhood stacks up, check out our interactive map on our news site, Got the Mist. New York City is seeing a summer spike in COVID cases. WMYC's Caroline Lewis reports on what precautions to take. The number of daily COVID cases reported in the city more than tripled between late April and late June. Public health experts say the disease is generally

less severe than it once was, but the CDC still urges anyone who's sick to stay away from others until their symptoms have been improving for at least 24 hours and their fever-free. The CDC also recommends that people take extra precautions for five days after they start feeling better, such as masking and paying closer attention to their hygiene. If you're thinking about getting another COVID shot, some health professionals suggest waiting until the fall when updated vaccines come out. They may offer better protection against new variants. It's the 4th of July, which means it's It's time to eat as many hot dogs as you can. That's if you're participating in the annual Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest.

After the break, we'll chat with a competitive eater about the big showdown. Stick around. Today is July 4th, which means it's also the annual Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. Here with me today is Crazy Legs Conti. Yes, that's his legal name. He's been a competitive eater for 23 years and appeared in 16 out of the past. past 23 hot dog eating competitions at Coney Island. Crazy Legs, thanks for joining me. Oh, honored to be here. So you were recently at a qualifier in D.C. to try to make this year's

July 4th contest. Tell me, how did that go? You know, the D.C. Qualifier, which was part of this big barbecue festival, had a huge fan base. It was 99 degrees, which is not great, mostly because it kind of heats the buns, makes up a little crisper. We had some great eaters, George Schmorg's Ford Chigger, put up a big number, but the big surprise was a rookie eater named Sean Yeager, who did 37 and a half hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. Wow. And I finished short of, you know, my goal. This year, the wildcard numbers were so strong.

So I didn't qualify, but I'll be out there today at Coney Island to cheer on the competitors and to, you know, enjoy the day. So how did you get into competitive eating? Well, I was always a fan of the sport in the mid-90s. And I happened to be in New Orleans when my hometown Patriots were playing in the Super Bowl. I couldn't get into the game. And there was, I was eating oysters. And I looked down the counter at Felix's.

And there was a guy who looked like, you know, King Neptune, kind of looks like me now, just eating them as fast as they were shucking them. And I asked what the restaurant record was, you know, how many had somebody eaten at once? And Kenny, my shuckers said that across the street at Acme, the record was 33 dozen. If you ate 34 dozen, they were free. So I went across the street and I'd been, you know, I'd summered in Maine as a camp counselor, eating as many lobsters as I could. I went to college in Baltimore where we'd have bushels of crabs.

But oysters are very cost prohibitive, especially in New York. So I ended up breaking the restaurant record of 34 dozen oysters in the course of the Super Bowl. And that led to a speed eating contest with the then IFOC, the International Federation of Competitive Eating. So I'm wondering, you know, what techniques do some of the winning competitors use? Well, we all separate the dogs and the buns, the dunking the buns in liquid. A lot of people use warm liquid to loosen up the esophagus and the inner kind of sphincters, all except for one perhaps. And then the bigger eaters usually do two dogs at once, two buns at once.

I would split the dog in half and use the nubs forward and put them, you know, lined up with my molars. And then while I'm doing that, I'm dunking the bun for five seconds. I use tang. You can use any beverage you want to dunk. I figure if it's good enough to go to space with the astronauts. Yeah. Good enough for my hot dog bumps. Absolutely.

But you know, to a person like me, this all sounds, I don't know, like a little painful. Is that the experience? Well, I think any sport you do, you go through, you know, an aerobic kind of physiological change. Sure. Yeah. We get the meat sweats. you see eaters kind of, you know, they'll be moving up and down. Certainly Joey Chestnut looks a little bit like trombone shorty in terms of how he's

having the food settle. Mickey Sudo does the, she uses her ponytail to kind of whip it to the side as she pops in little balls of bread. So everybody has to use sort of manual to oral dexterity. It just depends on the eater and how comfortable they are in terms of really pushing their body to the limit. Yeah. And I only ask that because in an article for Gothamist, you wrote about how competitive eating brings you a lot of pain and nausea. What keeps you coming back? Well, I mean, I think it's the pain and agony and nausea is very temporary. You know, it's a 10-minute contest,

which seems like a sprint, but it's really more of a marathon. But it's a unique sport. I've had goals that I never had for myself that were met simply by saying yes on the competitive eating circuit. In 2009, major league eating partner with Navy Entertainment, and we went on seven tours to entertain the sailor soldiers all over the world. I've been to Guantanamo Bay and bases in Italy and Greece. And that's really been the best thing I've done as a human being to see the sacrifices that the armed forces make so that we can celebrate days like July 4th with barbecues and family. But it's a strange sport. I'm not going to deny that, but I like a little surrealism. Yeah.

What's the one thing you wish more people? understood about competitive eating? Well, there's no magic or science in the eating. You really, you use a technique, whether it's Matatuck, Long Island, strawberry shortcake, you figure out the fastest way to eat one of the food units or the bowl of food. And then the rest of it is mind over stomach matter. It's really, you know, I say in the article that, you know, your stomach can fill up, but your mind never can. And I think some of the great eaters are ones who've met with sports psychologists who really focus on how they can overcome the notion that the physiological changes in those 10 minutes are going to hold them back. And that's where the next great eaters are going to

come from. This year's contest has made headlines already because the champion, Joey Chestnut, won't be there after he signed a deal with a vegan hot dog company. What will you be looking for? You know, it's an amazing day just to be out there. And then someone new will raise the yellow mustard belt. We'll have an after-party of rubies on the boardwalk. And really, there's a men's and a women's contest. It's the only food group that we separate the two. Mickey Sudo, the female champ, who's done 48 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. We'll be challenged by a Japanese eater named Maiori.

And on the men's side, without Joey Chestnut, you're looking at four or five great eaters who can eat in the 50s. And I think Pat Deep Dish Bertoletti from Chicago, he's got a lot of siblings. So they obviously had to eat food fast at the dinner table. I think he may take it in overtime against James Webb from Australia, who's a great eater as well. I've been talking with competitive eater, Crazy Ligs, Conti, Crazy Ligs. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you. It's fireworks season again in New York City.

And many are asking that eternal urban question, was that fireworks or gunfire? WMYC's Matt Katz has some answers. And a warning. This story contains the sound of gunshots. Knowing the difference between these sounds can be important. While both are generally illegal in New York, one might mean you should run for cover and call 911. The other might mean you file a noise complaint and call 311.

The two things are pretty closely related, at least sonically. John Goodpaster is a chemist at Indiana University who studied explosives in a laboratory for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. One giveaway that you're listening to a gun versus a firework is actually that you hear the loud noise, but it's actually spaced out. So bam, bam, bam, bam. That's because most guns in the U.S. are semi-automatic and you have to squeeze the trigger to fire each bullet. Listen closely. Here's a pistol being fired at Seneca Sporting Range in Ridgewood Queens.

Fireworks, on the other hand, have a cacophony of sounds coming at once. Good Pastor says there's a little. often crackling noises and whistles, which is the easiest way to tell the difference. There's one caveat. If multiple weapons are involved, good pastor says, it's far tougher to distinguish between the sounds. Matt Katz, WNYC News. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jenei Pierre. Enjoy the holiday. We'll be back on our regular schedule tomorrow.