Results tagged “contest”

Move over "Best Pizza" debate, there's something new we'll never all agree upon! Best Bagel. Serious Eats sent carb-lovers to the three most "bagel-happy boroughs" (allegedly Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens) to pick up some fresh samples and conduct a blind taste test. To keep things equal, they were all consumed plain and untoasted. Spoiler alert: Dunkin' Donuts didn't come in last. For shame, New York. For. Shame.

Just when we thought we'd have to go all the way to New Haven for the best slice of pizza pie, the 5 Borough Pizza Tour declares the best slice can be found right over in Staten Island. Salvatore of Soho (of Staten Island) came out on top; however, our resident pizza and Staten Island expert, John Kuhner, tells us "My favorite is Nunzio's, but the most famous is probably Denino's." Either way, it sounds like a good amount of our city's top slices are over there, so let's steal their recipes before selling the borough off to New Jersey.

Would you get naked for all of New York? Time Out NY got 7 locals to take it off, and now 32 more want to do it. You can vote online, but wouldn't you be a little freaked out to see that your 41-year-old anesthesiologist has a hankering to strip down and hook himself up to a Propofol drip?

     

There's nothing more fun and satisfying than throwing a pie at someone, and today plenty of people got to do just that outside of ABC Studios on the Upper West Side as they participated in tossing pies for the World’s Largest Pie Fight. This all went down during filming for “Live with Regis & Kelly.”, where participants attempted to break a new record in the Guinness World Records book. Did they succeed? Did any passerby get creamed? So many questions!

       

Did any of these people ever even see Fame? You wouldn't know it by looking at the outfits they chose for the costume contest that was held last night in conjunction with a screening of the classic 1980 film. This all went down in McCarren Park, where one would wager the audience had way more interesting 80s vintage incorporated into their daily attire than they did for the event. Cut-off tees? Jean shorts? Yawn. Check out the contestants, the winners and the disaffected hipsters, above.

              

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden announced the Greenest Block in Brooklyn today! The contest has inspired locals since 1995 to get creative with their greens and clean up their blocks. Marty Markowitz was on hand at the ceremony this morning, declaring, "Brooklyn’s gardens—and stoops, planters, window boxes, and tree beds—are the greenest!" (And those stoops sure are nice to drink a nice glass of wine on.)

       

We thought our old roommate who left behind a used condom in a dust bunny after he moved out was disgusting, but he seems like a paragon of good hygiene compared to these revolting animals, who are competing for "bragging rights" (and $1,000) in a nationwide "Dirtiest Apartment" contest. Two of the finalists hail from right here in Brooklyn, and the Daily News gave one of them, 29-year-old Lisa Henderson, her 15 minutes of shame (photo #3). She wouldn't let the tabloid's photographer shoot inside, however, because her mommy had just arrived from Arkansas to clean up her adult daughter's mess. On the contest's website, Henderson explains the wretched squalor:

Continue reading "Brooklyn Slobs Make Finals In Filthiest Apartment Contest!"

       

When NY1's (and Pat's Papers') Pat Kiernan agreed to help us out with some tips for New Yorkers on how to celebrate Canada Day a few weeks back, we had no idea just how deep his national pride ran in the desire to give our readers an authentic Canadian experience. The first three readers who responded to his Canadian pop star-themed trivia question were treated to a round of poutine, courtesy of the beloved local anchor.

       

Yesterday the top dogs of competitive eating faced off at the scales. Reigning champ Joey Chestnut and six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi were weighed in prior to their annual July 4th Nathan't Hot Dog showdown tomorrow. Chestnut, 25, came in at 218 lbs, to his 31-year-old competitor's 132 lbs. The two have faced off four times, with each taking home the belt twice, so this year will be a tie-breaker. Chestnut currently holds the world record, with his 2007 performance of eating 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes

The holiday weekend has all but started, which means the countdown is on to the 94th Annual Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest. Tens of thousands will be watching Takeru Kobayashi and reigning champ Joey Chestnut shove the sticks of mechanically recovered meat down their throats. The current record stands at 66 hot dogs, and analysts have posted odds on the contest, in case you're, like, betting on this or something.

Odds for the Winner of the 94th Nathans Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest

Continue reading "Hot Dog Eating Contest Season Begins (Now With Elephants)"

The best meatball of all five boroughs has been tasted, declared, digested, honored. After battling it out at Dish du Jour magazine's meatball melee last night, Manhattan's Bello Giardino took home the top honor with a traditional Italian meatball.

The FlyNY troupe is looking to briefly change up the city skyline this May, with their first kite-flying competition! The contest is open to all architects, artists, engineers, urban designers, product and industrial designers and folks just looking to have fun. This isn't as easy as it sounds, though, they note that "designing and building a kite involves an understanding of structure, proportion, craft, and function. Form and function are inextricably intertwined and constructability is paramount." (Hopefully the Nerd Herd will get in on this.) You have until May 9th to get your kite up and running, when the big event goes down on Pier I at 73rd Street. Get more details here (the flyer is after the jump), and let's hope the wind is blowin' that day!

Is New York City known for its meatballs? Well, Dish du Jour magazine is hosting its 8th annual food and wine gala which includes the first ever Best Meatballs of the Boroughs contest, and the publisher of the mag says “When it comes to meatballs, everyone thinks they’ve got the best. So we’re asking borough restaurants to put their meatballs where their mouths are. This is going to be a tight competition!”. That said, cocky restaurateurs out there are invited to compete for the title of Best Balls in the Boroughs which will be judged by a panel of celebrity judges. Participating restaurants will be visited by a "meatball phantom" (the important question here is, how does one get that job?!) and the undercover eaters will then narrow down the top 10 best balls in New York. Finalists will then be invited "to put their balls on the line at the main event on May 19th." Hopefully the organizers will be accepting vegetarian "meatballs" as well, like the ones at Rice and Foodswings. So...who's got the best balls out there?

Earlier today at Gallagher’s Steakhouse on West 52nd Street, some of the top Major League Eaters gathered around an obscene amount of corned beef sandwiches to see who could eat the most. Pat "Deep Dish" Bertoletti (sporting the mohawk) took the $10,000 prize home after a ingesting an impressive 8 lbs of meat (16 3/4 sandwiches), beating out Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, the reigning Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Champ, who "only" ate 15 1/2 sandwiches. The numbers alone are enough to induce meat sweats! Anyone up for Katz's?

The New Yorker finally announced the twelve winning entries in their annual Eustace Tilley cover contest, and this year both Bansky and the iPhone get some love! They have a gallery of all winners on their site, and say "a sample of the winning covers also appears in the February 9 and 16, 2009, issue of the magazine, which celebrates our eighty-fourth anniversary."

As part of their long-running campaign to ban foie gras, PETA has launched their "Fine Faux Foie Gras Challenge." The animal rights group hopes top chefs will join their effort to ban the force-feeding of geese, and to sweeten the deal, they're offering a $10,000 prize for the best vegetarian faux foie gras that's "comparable in taste and texture to the real glob of prized bird fat." Sarah DiGregorio at the Voice nominates the portobello mousse at chef Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy (friend of Gothamist). The critic cautions that while Cohen's mousse is not as delicious as actual livers from force-fed ducks, "it's awfully tasty, and inventive too." But what to call the stuff? Grub Street fears "Tofoie," or "Champignon Gras" lack the cachet demanded by a delicacy derived from ducks and geese with painfully engorged livers. (Detect any bias on this one?)

Looking for something to do over your holiday break? Bust out the thinking caps and put pen to paper for this year's Eustace Tilley contest! Last year saw an MTA subway map Tilley, and a Mr. Burns-Tilley; so far this year's entrants aren't on full display over at Flickr, but the mag does offer up this Barack Obama version of the iconic dandy.

New York, meet the bike rack of the future. Today the DOT announced that after a lengthy design competition, a jury of six—including sodden cyclist David Byrne—chose "Hoop" (pictured) out of the ten finalists. It's the work of two Copenhagen designers, Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve. "Constructed of cast metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand New York cyclists’ harsh treatment," the DOT said in a statement.

       

Awww, are you ready to have your heart warmed up by 100 zillion watts of pure canine cuteness? While the furry masses crowded Times Square Sunday for the Fourth Annual Dog Day Masquerade, the city's well-heeled hounds opted for a more refined day of dress-up at Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side, where the annual Halloween Howl was as pup-ular as ever. Flickr aficionado "istolethetv" was all over it like Scooby on snacks.

Ten of the world's most competitive eaters faced off in Times Square yesterday for the Famous Famiglia pizza-eating contest, and Joey Chestnut, the reigning hot dog-eating champion, emerged victorious by consuming a record-shattering 45 slices in 10 minutes. Chicago's Patrick Bertoletti, who held the previous record at 22 slices in 10 minutes, placed second yesterday with 43 slices. To win the $5,000 prize, Chestnut ate nothing but protein supplements for two days and drank a gallon of water to stretch his stomach muscles before the contest, during which he took in an estimated 11,700 calories and 450 grams of fat. The Daily News was on the scene and reports that "he never appeared to chew." Contestant Adam Gertler hailed Chestnut as "truly a god among eaters. He could probably put an entire work boot in his mouth."

CONTEST!: There's a star-studded, music-saturated nerdfest being held for a great cause tonight at Town Hall, and we have a pair of tickets for you! 826NYC presents Revenge of the Bookeaters, which features performances by Department of Eagles and some guy named Paul Simon. Also on hand: Parker Posey, Dave Eggers, Kyp Malone, Ira Glass, John Oliver and many more! If you want to go, just tell us (GothamistContest (at) gmail (dot) com) what Dave Eggers's favorite restaurant in New York is. Good luck! The contest is now closed!

          

The Department of Transportation's design competition for the next generation of bike racks entered its final phase yesterday with the installation of ten design prototypes around New York City. Nine of the ten finalists' prototypes were installed at Astor Place, and as of 6 p.m. yesterday they were almost entirely unused. It'll probably take a day or two before more cyclists discover the next-wave locking options in the Alamo island there, so for now it seems there's plenty of free parking.

Garrison Spik, the winner of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest, hails from Washington State, but chose New York for a starring role in his parody. The competition, in which contestants endeavor to pen the most cringe-worthy opening sentence to a non-existent novel, is named for Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, the 19th-century English writer whose novel Paul Clifford opens with the sentence: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

The ten finalists were announced today in the Department of Transportation’s search for new street bike rack designs. The city currently has nearly 4,700 boring old U-shaped "CityRacks" around town, but with a 75% ridership since 2000, that number’s not cutting it. The finalists will each receive an honorarium of $5,000 to produce two full-scale prototypes of their design. Whoever wins first place gets $5,000, and in exchange the city gets to keep the intellectual property rights to the design and start installing it. See New York's brave new world of bike racks here.

After last year's Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, six-time world hot-dog-eating champ Takeru Kobayashi declared: "I will definitely beat him next year." His opponent, Joey Chestnut, had won by eating 66 HDB (hot dogs and buns) to Kobayashi's 63. Despite not earning his way in to the contest as a regional qualifier, last year's loser be on hand this year in an attempt to earn back the title.

An “insider” tells the Post that the late Heath Ledger’s ex Michelle Williams is furious with Ledger’s family over the management of his estate. Ledger’s 2003 will, made out before his daughter Matilda was born, bequeathed everything to his father, mother and siblings; Matilda is now considered the beneficiary, but according to the Post, Williams thinks Ledger’s dad Kim will blow his Dark Knight millions before Matilda reaches 18. (Ledger's uncles have claimed Kim Ledger mishandled their own father's estate.) Rumor has it that Williams is so upset that she’s going to boycott the Dark Knight premiere on July 14th.

        

The exhaustive coverage of today's Red Hook Ikea opening here and elsewhere around the web was the inevitable climax of a perfect storm of storylines: Rough-edged neighborhood with a lot of history gets another turn in the spotlight – or are those cross hairs? Has Red Hook now sacrificed too much of the charm that made its sleepy waterfront streets so appealing to artists? Or is the arrival of big retail business just what the neighborhood needs to help the lower-income locals – whose streets are hardly sleepy – rise out of poverty?

While shoppers' enthusiasm for the new Brooklyn Ikea has been well documented today, opinion was decidedly mixed among residents who skipped the festivities at the new 346,000 square foot store. Jennifer Cohen, a Red Hook resident for the last eight years, voiced the most common concern, that the neighborhood's streets and buses would be overly taxed by thousands of shoppers descending on the store, which is far from the subway.

      

Six of the twenty-two acres of land that Ikea occupies in Red Hook have been turned into a park and waterfront esplanade, built by the big box retailer as a deal-sweetener for their wary neighbors. You don’t need to buy any Swedish meatballs to hang out by the water, and the free Water Taxi service arranged by Ikea might make it an appealing weekend destination in its own right.

         

After nearly six years of controversy, construction, worry and anticipation, the first Ikea in New York City opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn this morning. By the time the doors opened at 9:00 a.m., hundreds of shoppers had gathered on line outside the popular Swedish retailer. A festive atmosphere prevailed without any of the community dissent that had threatened to stymie the project from the beginning.