I have been very upset since Nathan’s Hot Dogs would not allow Takeru Kobayashi, known also as Kobi the world’s greatest competitive eater, to compete in their contest. In this report Kobi talks about how unjust and cruel they are.
The Wikimania conference in DC is upcoming and many international visitors are here in Manhattan touring before the conference, and we advertised to them that if they wanted to understand American culture then they should come to one of our eating contests. The hot dog eating contest on Coney Island used to be a big deal until Kobayashi began to win too many contests. There are many rumors from trustworthy sources that people organizing the contest have unsavory prejudices of all kinds against people like Kobayashi and that they devised new contract rules to harm him.
I made protest signs to display at the event – “Eating 69 hot dogs is not a crime”, “Takeru Kobayashi you Take-ru my heart”, and “Twitter now! Support @TeamKobayashi, Protest @EatingContest, #FreeKobi”. Richard was tickled to carry one and an Italian Wikipedia developer, Marios, also helped with the protest. We protested very hard and incited fiery passion in the crowd. Most of the crowd supported us but some of them, only because of their ignorance of the issue and the hurt they felt because Kobayashi was not eating, said that Kobayashi was wrong for not attending. There is a lot of propaganda going around that Kobayashi is refusing to eat as an insult to America, when actually he is very dedicated and loves American freedom and is hurt that he is not free to eat here.
We went swimming on the beach then went on a tour of Richard’s neighborhood nearby and visited his house for a while. He has a cool book collection. We met other Wikipedians for dinner making a total of about 15 of us, and at dinner we still had the signs and everyone was shocked because most people think of America as a free country. We went and watched the fireworks. I made lots of new friends then the day was over.
I want Kobayashi to have success in everything he does and I am his fan. If I am able to attend the hot dog contest again then next time I will arrive sooner and help coordinate an even bigger protest.