Get Herald RSSI've never been particularly seduced by hot dogs. Sure, a greasy Ballpark is fine at the baseball stadium, but given the choice, I'll take almost any other foodstuff over the standard-issue wiener. So when I heard that Spike's, the legendary Thayer Street hot-dog emporium, was shutting its doors for good on Sept. 28, I was surprised to find myself feeling gloomy.
Spike's, of course, is home to the Spike's Challenge, a fabled eating contest that has tempted me ever since I arrived at Brown. The rules of the challenge never seemed all that forbidding: Finish six hot dogs in an hour and a half without vomiting, and you win. The prizes aren't much - a Spike's t-shirt, your Polaroid on the wall - but anything containing the word "challenge" is catnip to a red-blooded American male, and unless I acted quickly, I'd never get the chance to conquer this Iditarod of gluttony. And so, one night last week, a group of brave friends accompanied me to Spike's, where we pledged to take the Spike's Challenge one last time to see, once and for all, whose gastrointestinal fortitude reigned supreme.
Dog #1: Our quest gets off to a rocky start when David Hess '11 asks the guy behind the counter for "an order of the Challenge." The Spike's worker, a goateed bruiser with the personality of a barbed-wire fence, sneers back: "You want to do the Challenge, I take it?"
Semantics aside, the first hot dog goes down smoothly. It's juicy and plump, with a large, salty bun, and the ketchup and mustard give it a burst of tangy crispness. Not bad.
"How many calories do you think we're going to eat tonight?" asks Joe Lerman '11.
UCS President Brian Becker '09 grimaces. "We don't speak of that number."
Dog #2: A few strategies are emerging. Personally, I belong to the just-get-it-over-with camp, but a few of my friends are taking it slow (something about digestion). Hess is dipping his buns in water before eating them - a tactic he cribbed from a hot-dog eater named Kobayashi, who is apparently some kind of authority on these matters.
"I feel great," says Jason Bertoldi '10, tucking away his second dog. "I could eat 30 of these."
Dog #3: At the halfway point of the Challenge, a series of dull rumbles begin to spread through my lower intestines. I'm feeling full, and it's not the hot dogs' fault. It's the buns - huge, buttery baguettes that extend a good two inches on either side of the wiener. Eating six of these buns is going to be the equivalent of taking down an entire loaf of Pepperidge Farm soaked in corn oil.
I think I'm the only one struggling. Hess emitted a little sigh after polishing off his third dog, but no one else is slowing down. President Becker is slathering Russian dressing on his fourth, preparing it for consumption. Bertoldi smiles confidently as he jams number three down his throat.
"I feel like Usain Bolt over here."
Dog #4: Have you ever smelled a hot dog? Like, really let the foul, unrepentant meatiness of the thing invade your nose? The stench of my fourth frank transports my brain to a slaughterhouse, and I'm picturing a pile of blood-soaked trimmings being shaped into this stick of nondescript meat. Bile is rising in my throat.
"I'm getting light-headed," says Hess, who is slumped catatonically over the table. "This is disgusting."
Dog #5: I quit. I can't take it anymore. I'm being waterboarded with cholesterol. What do I have to do to make this torture stop? Surrender my bike lock combination? Give out my e-mail password? I'll do it all.
The guy behind the counter smirks as I confess my failure. Lerman quits before dog number five arrives. Hess is dry-heaving. The only two still eating are Becker and Bertoldi.
"I think my stomach is bleeding," Hess says.
"If there's less blood in your stomach," says Bertoldi, shoving his fifth into his mouth, "that's more room for hot dogs."
Dog #6: I take a break from suppressing my own vomit to watch Bertoldi and Becker finish their final hot dogs, completing the Spike's Challenge with panache. It's been 45 minutes, which means that these two men have eaten six large rolls and more than a pound of meat in half the time allotted to them. Becker even dared to order bacon on his sixth. I am in awe.
"This is terrible," says Bertoldi, releasing a belch that smells like a locker room. "I feel so, so ill."
It might not have been pretty, but he's done it - he's gone up against College Hill's biggest gustatory test and emerged a winner. He collects his free t-shirt from the snarling mastodon behind the counter and poses for a picture in front of the American flag hung in the window.
As Bertoldi mugs for the camera, ketchup plastered to his chin, I feel another round of rumbles starting up in my gut. It's dyspepsia, most likely, but I prefer to think of it as patriotism. Watching my friend claim this most American of victories from an iconic Providence institution, I can't help smiling. I know it's been said before, but for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.
Kevin Roose '09.5 is Brown's newest vegetarian.
