The hamburgers fry at the 2019 Taste of Hamburg-er Festival. PHOTO BY LINDSEY SHUEY
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on August 31, 2019.
Wes Cipolla
HAMBURG - “Please, NO PETS at the festival!” The guidebook of the 16th annual Taste of Hamburg-er Festival read. “They are constantly surrounded by tempting foods and at times have been known to snatch a burger.”
That didn’t stop some of the hundreds of attendees at Saturday’s festival from bringing their furry and sometimes feathered friends. Tyler Brooks, who came from Richmond, Va., and his girlfriend Angel Snyder brought their massive St. Bernard Onyx. Juan Velasquez, 40, Reading, had his macaw Taz, 18, on his shoulder.
“Come here, Taz,” he said as Taz flapped his wings.
“It’s his time to be out,” said Velasquez, who fell in love with tropical birds when he saw Fred, the cockatoo on “Baretta.” “We bring him out every year.”
Velasquez loves the food and people, and was a big fan of 2018’s spaghetti burger.
“That was wild,” he said.
There were plenty more burgers than that to choose from. The grill smoke made the air hazy as throngs of people walked up Fourth Street in Hamburg, including a woman wearing a “Earth is FLAT” t-shirt and pushing a giant cart covered in pictures and text purporting to prove just that.
“Schools censor evidence!” it said. “They LIE to you!”
One offering was Albie’s Whoopie Pie burger, which cook Josh Moyer said was his way of combining sweet, salty and savory. Uncle Paul’s Stuffed Pretzels won the Grand Champion award in the food trailer division, thanks to its burger that was inside a pretzel.
Outside of the Lazy Dog Vintage Market on State Street sat an old man with a white handlebar mustache, smoking a fat cigar while a man walked past with a panting bulldog cradled in his arms. Next to him was a vaping man wearing full Irish regalia, kilt and all, debating income taxes with the woman next to him.
“It might be a German day but every day is a Scottish and Irish day,” said the man, Noel Rodriguez, 27, Hamburg. He wasn’t there for the burgers, but to meet new people.
Along with food and drink, the festival offered live musical entertainment. There was also the Amateur Hamburger Eating Contest, sponsored in part by Peach Tree pet cremation services, began. The four teams were the beret-wearing Burgers of Calais, Low Expectations, The Cheese Wizards and Stars and Stripes. The Low Expectations lived up to their name. They didn’t show up to the contest and were replaced with three volunteers from the audience. The new team, called Yo!, got a rock star’s welcome from the crowd, lifting up their shirts to show their bellies. At the beginning of the contest, Stars and Stripes scarfed down the burgers rapidly, while the Burgers of Calais ate methodically. They savored the experience, as if they were sitting in a Parisian cafe.
“It’s just an afternoon in the park watching 12 men eat,” the announcer said.
“Let’s go Yo! Eat!” An audience member cheered.
“Come on, Kyle!” A woman yelled at the Cheese Wizards.
It was getting brutal now. The increasingly full teams were lumbering over the burgers. Soon enough it was over. The Burgers of Calais won first place, followed by Stars and Stripes. With a determined stare, one of the Burgers triumphantly held up the empty burger tray.
“Cheese Wizards, how many you got left?” The announcer asked.
“Too many,” said team member Andrew Christman.
“You may wanna move back,” the announcer said to the crowd in front of the stage. “The rules are gentlemen, if you heave you leave.”
Yo! came in third.
The Burgers of Calais are a competitive eating trio named after a sculpture by Auguste Rodin and was founded in July at an Orwigsburg car show by Philadelphian Jim Shulman, Lance Heinrichs of Norristown and New Yorker Jeff Hanover.
Shulman tried to explain.
“We realized that the three of us were-”
“Of size,” Heinrichs interrupted.
“I was gonna say of above average eating ability,” Shulman continued. Ketchup stains streaked the sides of his mouth. While Shulman boasted that he could eat another three dozen burgers, Heinrichs said that his stomach was “in a state of shock.”
After many years of coming to the festival, Shulman felt this would be his year.
“My friends think I’m out of my mind,” he said, “but I love it and it’s worth the trip. Hamburgers are the food of the gods, and it’s the logical extension of every cow in America.”
“I don’t really like hamburgers,” Hanover said.
“I’m more of a Mexican food kind of guy,” Heinrichs added.
That slow eating was part of their strategy, along with only eating a little that morning.
“That enabled our digestive systems to accommodate the sudden onslaught of ground beef,” Shulman said. He went on to say that their passion gave them the edge, and that he was “humbled and gratified” by the “extraordinary achievement.”
“You can say we felt the love,” he said.
That, and maybe nausea.
Along with bronze medals whose ribbons were the same colors of the French flag, the Burgers got a $150 check that they split. Hanover plans to spend his portion on gas for the trip back to New York.
“You’ll have enough gas on the way to New York City,” Shulman joked.
Then came the professional eating contest, which the announcer called “one of the most competitive burger-eating contests in the country.” As the contestants entered, he listed their formidable resumes.
“A street fightin’ man,” he said, “holds 13 records in food challenges. In four minutes he ate a five-and-a-half pound cheese sandwich. From Jonestown, please welcome Sergeant Mike ‘the Gunny’ Hornacek!”
Then came Jimmy “Bear Hands” Purificato from Oakdale, N.Y. (“He ate an entire 18-inch pizza pie in five minutes and 23 seconds!”), Snacks (“ate a 30-inch pizza by himself in 20 minutes. He’s eaten ten pounds of Fig Newtons!”) and The Mouth (“ate 20 hot dogs in ten minutes!”). There was Jadyn Pineda of Bedford, a man who conquered the Killer Calzone and a 28-inch pizza and Dan “The Killer” Kennedy of West Decatur (“He’s eaten 12 and a half pounds of pumpkin pie in 10 minutes, 252 Viennese sausages in nine minutes, 42 chili dogs in seven minutes!”) The chili dog statistic got thunderous applause from the crowd.
Among all the bearded, tattooed macho men on stage (Hornacek is an active-duty marine), there was one unassuming woman.
“She’s eaten 501 chicken wings in 30 minutes!” The announcer said, introducing Molly Schuyler, a thin woman, herself heavily tattooed and her ears covered in piercings. She holds the Guiness World Record for most pudding eaten in three minutes (12 pounds).
“She’s so little!” A girl in the audience squealed.
The returning champion was saved for last: Bob “The Notorious B.O.B.” Shoudt from Royersford (“20 omelets in 60 seconds, 16 pounds of canned peas in 15 minutes!”) who has competed in Brazil, came on to a frenzied crowd chanting “B-O-B!” Schuyler squirted some ketchup in her mouth. Several eaters, including Shoudt, a YouTuber with 78,000 subscribers, placed miniature cameras on the table to film the feast.
It’s hard to divide your attention between nine people scarfing down burgers. The beards were filled with crumbs. Shoudt’s was stained red with ketchup. As some women in the audience said, it was gross.
“Molly! Molly!” The crowd chanted.
She was in the lead, at five burgers while the majority of the competition was at two. It was between her and Killer Kennedy. She showed no signs of slowing down. After eight burgers. Kennedy was stuffing himself to bursting. Ketchup was flying - Schuyler looked like a lioness after tearing into a wildebeest. She reached ten, then 11, and slightly choked, splashing her scorekeeper with water. The crowd was awestruck. Molly ate her seventeenth hamburger, breaking the previous record of 16.
“You’re seeing history this afternoon!” The announcer said.
In the nick of time, Molly finished her twentieth burger. 20 burgers in ten minutes - a new record. After the contest came the real challenge; keeping it all down for two minutes. Kennedy was exhausted, the veins in his forehead about to burst. Schuyler said she felt fine, even eating more burgers after the contest ended.
“I’ve been wanting to get here for seven years,” “it was pretty God-darn cool. It felt cool - though you shouldn’t take God’s name in vain like that.”
She started eating competitively in Nebraska in 2012, after someone bet her that she couldn’t eat a five-pound burger. She did. Her strategy on Saturday? Eat until she was full. Several fans came up to Schuyler asking for pictures.
“Molly, you rock!” one yelled.
“It’s awesome,” she said. “If we didn’t have them we wouldn’t be here.”
Those fans were stunned that she could out-eat several men. As one of the few women in the male-dominated field of competitive eating, Schuyler understands that feeling.
“It feels like you’re actually making a difference,” she said. “Standing above some of the other people.” She wants to break ground for more women. “I’m on top of the heap, so to tell someone to knock me down, that’s dine. I’m having a great time.”
She couldn’t talk for long. She was headed to Los Angeles for a ramen noodle eating contest.
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