Florida Report From Russ Daugh

Our loyal reader in Florida, Russ Daugh sent us a clipping from the Sunday Daytona Beach News-Journal about the explosion of hot dog eateries in Volusia and Flagler Counties.

The sidebar to the article includes all kinds of interesting facts and figures about the noble tubesteak. For instance, did you know that...

• Babe Ruth once ate 20 dogs between games at a doubleheader
  
• American consumers spent 1.8 billion dollars on hot dogs last year
  
• The average American eats 60 hot dogs a year
  
• 7 billion hot dogs will be consumed between Memorial Day and Labor Day
  
• Los Angeles holds the record for the most hot dogs purchased... 44,723,350 pounds of them to be exact

We don't know if Russ Daugh read the article all the way to the end... The story finishes off with a rather embarassing admission about the lameness of Floridians... To quote...

The Deltona Famous Uncle Al's store recently staged a hot dog eating contest, which attracted ten contestants, including four women. the winner was Deltona resident Nick Chavez, who managed to eat four and a half hot dogs in five minutes, edging out his nearest competitor by a bite.

The photo accompanying the story shows corpulent contestant, Nick Chavez praying over his hot dogs before devouring them. Perhaps if he had spent less time praying and more time devouring, he would have been able to better the sorry showing of just four and half dogs in five minutes! Why, any one of the crack Hot Dog Spot Team could have beat that record in our sleep, even scrawny little L.J. Dawgg! Daytona Beach is going to have to go into training if they hope to catch up with Los Angeles in the hot dog eating arena!

Thanks for the article, Russ Daugh!