There are some really cute quotes from kids who got to swim with Michael Phelps at the McBurney YMCA yesterday. A little girl who told the Sun that Phelps is "the fastest swimmer in the world" said of her own speed, "I don't swim fast or slow — I'm just medium." The NY Times overheard children saying, “I want to ask him if he can make more medals, really" and “He was like a person......

Yesterday's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest had a lot to live up to after last year's heavily-hyped and record-breaking victory that saw Joey Chestnut bring the Mustard Belt back to America by snapping the six-year victory streak of legend Takeru Kobayashi. How did they manage to top it? Overtime! After the two giants of competitive eating ended regulation in a dead heat at 59 franks a piece, Nathan's officials scrambled and decided to hold......

The air at Coney Island is charged as the annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest will be underway in moments. Contributor Billy Parker is on the scene and tells us the Nathan's "Franksters" (hot dog mascots) had a dance "to the death": "The old Frankster had serious moves, while a newer Frank was booed." Tien Mao, hot dog enthusiast, and I will also be chiming in. This year, the contest will be for......

Tomorrow's big showdown is set, with reigning Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Champions Joey Chestnut facing off against six-time champ Takeru Kobayashi in the battle of who can devour-and keep down-more hot dogs in 10 minutes. The two, along with other contestants, were weighed in today. Kobayashi is 165 pounds while Chestnut is 230 pounds. Last year, Chestnut set the new world record by eating 66 hot dogs--66 hot dogs equal to about about 14.5......

George and Richard Shea, the two brothers who run the annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest at Nathan’s on Coney Island, are considering changing the duration of the competition from 12 minutes to 10 minutes, and some competitive eaters are finding the new rule hard to swallow. George Shea told the Brooklyn Paper that the change is being weighed after an investigation into the traditional time limit unearthed a 1986 Times article that......

Open wide for the forthcoming Nintendo Wii game Major League Eating, which lets players compete as some of the most famous speed eaters in the world, like Takeru Kobayashi, six-time winner of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest. If the game turns out to be half as fun as this promotional trailer, there’s going to be a lot of virtual binging going down this summer. How about that “Belch Off,” eh? Good times. Even better is......

If you work on the west side near 14th Street, consider your lunch plans settled: the Papaya King on 7th Ave. and 14th is giving away free hot dogs to the first 500 customers today and tomorrow. As of 11:06am, just 32 customers had taken advantage of the deal, which is part of a promotional for Unhitched, a new Farrelly brothers sitcom starring Rashida Jones, who plays Jim’s ex-girlfriend on The Office. As this sentence......

Bless the Daily News for suggesting that Coney Island institution Nathan's Famous might become a "towering wiener wonderland with clubs, stores and hotel rooms," thanks for a provision in Coney Island development plans. We now dream of living in a building shaped like a hot dog, complete with relish-stucco exterior - and we'd hope our fellow tenants would be Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi and that there would be room service from Nathan's. Anyway, back......

The new season of the Apprentice premiered on Thursday with its celebrity (or "celebrity" - if you consider Omarosa from the Apprentice's Season 1 a celebrity) twist. The show received its best ratings in two years, winning the 9PM timeslot for viewers ages 18-49. The Donald said, "I was really happy. I wasn't expecting this." We missed watching it, but NBC offers episodes online - you can see the premiere here - so we......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a ceiling collapse at Franklin Ave. and Union St. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian was fatally struck on Queens Blvd. in Woodhaven, Queens, and an unusual rescue on the south bound tower of the Throgs Neck Bridge in Queens. An undercover cop forgot to turn off the wire he was wearing while discussing 11 bags of cocaine he seized in a Brooklyn bust that were never turned in. He was......

Mike Bloomberg may end his tenure as the Mayor of Pothole Repair. Under Bloomberg's watch, the city has filled 1.25 million potholes since 2002. While anybody that hits potholes with their bike or their car surely thinks the city missed a few, Mayor Bloomberg assures us that they are doing what it can to fix them. In his first public appearance since returning from Asia, Bloomberg said, "Now, potholes are as much a part......

When the stagehands’ strike ended late Wednesday night, the general consensus was that not all Broadway productions would be able to pull it together in time for Thursday night re-openings. But as it turned out, all 27 strike-darkened shows were up and running last night, despite the challenges that larger productions faced after 19 dormant days. Chicago, for instance, had two stars joining the cast – Vincent Pastore and Aida Turturro of “The Sopranos” –......

Few have noticed, and perhaps less care, but there aren’t too many hot dog shacks or trucks left in the city. Despite the recent success of relatively fancy dogs topped with everything from kimchee puree to avocado mash, a few legendary hot dog outposts still exist in the far reaches of Brooklyn and Queens, tucked away on corners near scrap metal dealers and steel-frame towers of junked cars. These are the kinds of places where......

Oktoberfest has been over for quite sometime now, but that's never stopped us from enjoying good German beer and sausages. Which is exactly how we wound up at Austrian newcomer Cafe Katja last night. There's also something to be said for such hearty meat-laden fare as the mercury drops. And judging by how crowded the small dining room was when we left, a lot of New Yorkers felt the same way last night. While......

AMNY ruined elitist drinkers’ fun today by outing some “secret” watering holes around town. One of them, The Back Room, is no secret, just a pain to find for first-timers. The capacious bar is tucked away at 102 Norfolk Street two doors down from a "Lower East Side Toys" sign; pass through a gate and down some steps to a narrow alley that leads to an unmarked door. Or just look for the bouncer standing......

We’ve been cooking a lot with bacon lately, so we’re delighted with The Bacon Cookbook by James Villas. Villas calls bacon “the greatest and most beloved food on earth,” and while we’re not sure we’d go that far, there are moments when we have to agree there’s nothing better. A few things we learned about bacon: - It’s one of the oldest meats in history; the Chinese were preserving and salting pork bellies around 1500......

Fridays are bustling on 34th Street, but yesterday was a little different. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was spotted with billionaire developer Donald J. Trump and his three adult children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. What were they doing? Walking, talking, and eating hot dogs. Or at least Mayor Bloomberg was eating a hot dog - he loves hot dogs and they love him! And why? Because NBC is filming the celebrity edition of The......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A boat in distress at the Roosevelt Island Bridge, a homicide on Howard in Brooklyn, and a stabbing on Jamaica Avenue and 161st Street in Queens Hillary Clinton out-fund-raises Rudy Giuliani and Barack Obama in New York, which makes sense since she's been building her donor list as a Senator from New York. The big mystery of NYC: Where the middle class live. A man was fatally hit by......

Generally, when one thinks of baseball game food, the usual suspects come to mind -- hot dogs, sausage and pepper sandwiches, Cracker Jacks, maybe some nachos, complete with day-glo cheez -- but tucked away in a corner of Shea stadium lies something that puts them all to shame. Mama's of Corona is squirreled away on the third base side on the Field Level of the stadium, and those of us with the cheap seats have......

There's nothing like an endorsement from Gray's Papaya to show that NYC generally likes Mike. But it seems that to hinge upon his subway straphanger credentials - will the hot dog eatery reconsider, given that he is chauffeured to a subway station 22 blocks away (when there's one four blocks away), only likes to take the express and that his spokesman thinks people who like riding the subway need a shrink (hello, universal health......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: missing children on Lenox Rd. in Brooklyn, shots fired at Columbus Ave. and West 104th St. in Manhattan, and a water rescue at the Stepping Stone Lighthouse off City Island in the Bronx. The chief of a volunteer fire company in the Bronx is scrambling to explain how the firehouse is now broke, after receiving a half-million dollars in donations after 9/11/01. A pair of 15-year-olds will be tried......

July 28: 2nd Annual QBQ BBQ Burger Bash It's burger time! This weekend is the second annual Gothamist-Serious Eats/A Hamburger Today QBQ BBQ at Water Taxi Beach. Your votes determined the burgers on the menu: the onion burger, the butter burger (pictured), and the pimento cheese burger. Six Apart will be sponsoring the event with a keg of Orlio and Gothamist/Serious Eats/A Hamburger Today will also be supplying an additional keg of beer. Tickets, which......

The New York Times has a great story about police officer John Nevandro, who has been patrolling the boardwalk at Coney Island in Brooklyn for 21 years. When he started walking the beachside beat, he had to chase off perverts looking to glance up women's skirts from below the boardwalk. Now he knows the boardwalk so well that he can tell which sections need repair from the sound planks make as he rolls over them......

While the residual mustard stains have barely dried from last week’s extremely popular Hot Dog Eating Contest at Nathan’s Famous, it seems like the realm of competitive eating in NY has reached an overdue “I’m full” saturation point. So it’s only in the interest of each borough having its own event that we bring you this next story- the 4th Annual Dumpling Eating Contest, taking place on Sunday August 5th as part of the Hong......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

The hot dogs were barely digested when Takeru Kobayashi threw down the proverbial gauntlet for next year's Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. After being handed defeat by Joey Chestnut in this year's contest, Kobayashi looked at Chestnut, pointed and yelled, "I will definitely beat him next year." Chestnut broke his own world record and Kobayashi's Coney Island record yesterday by eating 66 HDB (hot dogs and buns) and brought the Mustard Belt back......

Just in time for the Fourth (and in case the Nathan's contest gave you a hankering), Jason Perlow at Off the Broiler brings us The Great Off the Broiler Hot Dog Tasting of 2007. Updating his oeuvre of 2004 for which he tasted fourteen hot dog varieties, Perlow expands his sampling pool to thirty-two different dogs. All we can add is, better you than us, buddy. His scoring system is quite thorough:Spicyness scores were......

It's our favorite July 4th tradition, this side of smiley-face fireworks: The Annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, held at Nathan's in Coney Island. And this year's competition is particularly tantalizing: Current champion Takeru Kobayashi has been having jaw pains, while Joey Chestnut broke the hot dog eating record, by scarfing down 59.5 at a June event. So we shall begin our liveblogging, and Jen Chung and Tien Mao will be providing other commentary......

Competitive eating powerhouses convened in front of City Hall today to be weighed in for tomorrow's Nathan's Famous July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest. Six-time winner and current mustard belt holder Takeru Kobayashi weighed in at 154 pounds while Joey Chestnut, who broke Kobayashi's hot-dog eating record by keeping down 59.5 hot dogs at an Arizona event last month, weighed in at 215 pounds. Kobayashi had signaled his all-important jaw muscles weren't feeling that......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Israel Baseball League Opening Day (Sunday. 11:00 a.m., 4::30 p.m., WNET 13; 10:00 p.m., WLIW 21) This special looks at the newest professional baseball league’s opening day where the Modi’in Miracle played the Petach Tikva Pioneers in the first Israeli professional baseball league. Concert for Diana (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WNBC 4) Princes William and Harry are the driving forces behind this concert featuring their favorite musicians perform......