Wing Bowl

For non-Philadelphians, Wing Bowl is Philadelphia's annual gathering of white trash debauchery, gluttony, and over the top glitz. Yes, a whole lot of chicken wings consumed in three hours, a whole lot of bare breasts, and a whole lot of insane costumes greeted us at 6AM. Its usually billed as Philadelphia's Mardi Graus, though I'm not sure I would say it's that cultured. Its still fun, in a totally over the top way. Originally established in 1993 as the frustration of Eagles disappointing its hungry fanbase, the local sports radio 610 WIP built it up from a free rinkydink event to today's $10 and up sell-out crowd of 20,000 mostly drunken men eager to wash away the winter blues with a heavy dose of sex, puke, and heavy guys guzzling chicken meat.



I went with my friend Matt, and out of towner Cassie J. Sneider, who was in town for a reading of her comics. When I originally contacted her to set up, she answered the phone, "You just interupted me watching a guy eat 500 hot dogs." Like many Americans these days, she was settling into unemployment with reality tv, like Man vs. Food. I mentioned Wing Bowl, which seemed to perk her interest in setting the comics reading for that day so she could see Philadelphia's finest, and some say darkest, annual round of insanity.

A friend of mine, Matt, decided to join us. After staying up for a while at The Republican, a fine seedy corner, (where a young lady told us that she "likes vagina!" after mishearing Matt tell her that she was "hating" on me for "hitting", and her friend later telling us that sometimes she just blurts things out without really thinking about it, and she wasn't really gay) we picked up Cassie around 5AM, who seemed a little blurry eyed after a late arrival from Long Island. We proceeded to park the car and make what I like to call "The Walk of Triumph" from my place at 17th and Snyder down Broad Street to Broad and Pattison, the scene of Philadelphia's great Sports Complex, where the Wing Bowl is hosted at the Wells Fargo Center, or whatever bank owns it at the time. (It'll always be the First Union, or FU Center, to me.)

We arrived to seeing a large amount of busty, skinny strippers, and Angelo Cataldi, the host of the morning show, and overall buffoon, belting on about all the hot women around him. Cassie and Matt seemed to get more and more horrified as the morning went on. Usually things like this that are so over the top make me crack up, and today proved to be no exception.

Me giggling at the insanity

Cassie seemed unsure of what she was about to witness

Matt can't believe it either.

If I was a mathemitician, I'd say that Wing Bowl is about 65% strippers and boobs, 30% chicken wing chowing and the related vomit montages, and 10% crazy floats and costumes when the eaters are being introduced, (though if you add up those percentages, you'll see why I'm not a mathematician). My personal favorite was the ever blasphemous float of "Freak of Nature", which seemed to resemble the Pope-mobile featuring an array of stripper cardinals, and the eater himself as God. Strippers rode a mechanical bull, though somewhat gingerly. The megatron featured constant zoomups on women in the crowd, who haipply flashed the camera to the delight of everyone in attendance. Ron Jeremy, the legendary porn star, gleed with delight at the proceedings, though, as one philly.com commenter said, "It was one of the few times where Ron Jeremy actually made an event classier."

The view from the peanut gallery

As the proceedings got underway, we were greeted with the best rendition of the National Antheme of the United States I'd ever heard. It was lead by a stripper with a beatuiful voice and joined in by 20,000 drunkards shouting at the top of their lungs, something somewhat magical. After forever going through the introductions, the eating finally began. Within minutes, the whole stadium reeked of stinky hot sauce, and, as Cassie put it, "sweaty nuts", topped off by some aroma of marijuana in the bathrooms. All of the eaters furiously stripped the  bones of meat and disgarded enough bones to make people of the future wonder if this was a ritual of sacrifice to our strange chicken-hating Gods.

During a break, Takeru Kobayashi, a legendary Japanese competitive eater who holds the world record for hot dog eating when he ate 50 dogs in 12 minutes on Coney Island, beat the previous record of 48 seconds of downing a foot-long Cheesesteak in half at 24 seconds. The dude must of unhinged his jaw or something, because I've never seen a sandwich disappear that fast. He said he would enter next year's contest. Which basically tells me that he will win it next year.

My companions started getting a little sleepy towards the end:

Hiding or snoozing?

Breakfast included two ice creams and crab fries. Good morning!

By the end, it came down to El Wingador, the 5 time champ who had taken two years off after they banned professional eaters from Wing Bowl, and Super Squib, the winner of the last two Wing Bowls as the amateur. One of my favorite game-time activities is small stakes betting, (usually on megatron games), and wagered with Cassie $5 on El Wingador. It was a bet I would lose, as Super Squib out-ate El Wingador 255 wings to 254, with a strange bobbing motion he employed while stripping the meat off the bones.

Cassie's expression for most of Wing Bowl

At the end, I needed to remind Cassie that, "Don't forget. This was your idea", judging by the look on her face. 

The summary of Wing Bowl would be, as one of the strippers put it, "More nips. Less puke."

What did I think? I'm not sure I'd want to go again, but its certainly a sight, especially if you're in the business of story telling. Whether its a sight to see or a sight to keep a healthy distance from, that's for you to decide. One local professor even wonders if Wing Bowl is a threat to Western culture? I kind of doubt it. Though our civilization is due to crumble, you might as well make it look as ridiculous as possible.