Lord of the Wings
See, the Wing Bowl isn’t just a chicken-eating contest. It’s an institution. From its meek origins 12 years ago in the studio of WIP, Wing Bowl has grown into a pageant that rivals the increasingly anachronistic-looking Mummers Parade — 24,000 fans, half-naked Wingettes, months’ worth of promotions and interviews and hype leading up to the big day. But as Wing Bowl’s gotten bigger, it has started to attract "national" eaters like Thomas. Could it be that Wing Bowl’s local flavor — its essential Phillyness — is threatened?
And if this really is a battle for the soul of Wing Bowl, what does that mean for Bill Simmons?
In this year’s Wing Bowl, on February 4th, several famous national eaters will likely be competing for the first time. Sonya Thomas will be back, too. Everyone expects and hopes that Bill — whose veins course with what International Federation of Competitive Eating chairman George Shea calls "the blood of a patriot, of a veteran, of a working man and … the true American" — will "come back this year for what is going to be the ultimate rematch," says Shea. Here in the patriot’s kitchen, cars whizzing by on the Jersey Turnpike not 50 yards behind him, Bill is rocking back and forth in his chair, rubbing his hands. "See," he says, "I get nuts talkin’ about it," and laughs at his own intensity. "Now I gotta go punch the bag."
Bill pauses and leans forward.
"To be honest with you," he says, "I want to fuckin’ get in there and beat that bitch."
Wing Bowl is as Wing Bowl does. Wing Bowl is the wind beneath our wings. It is our rock, it is our island. It is any bullshit thing you could think it is, because it’s so simultaneously inane and important, silly and crucial, repugnant and joyous, inconsequential (fat guys, chicken wings, strippers) and genuinely high-stakes.
How high? Someday, quite possibly someday soon, a human being will die at Wing Bowl, actually die, and not from choking on a chicken bone. Maybe a fan will chuck a beer bottle at an out-of-town contestant and crack open his skull. Or a curvy, breast-baring Wingette will stop some elderly fan’s ticker. Or maybe, finally, Angelo Cataldi will pop a brain vessel trying to figure out how his humble little radio promotion became the signature event — yes, sing it from the 700 level! — of Philadelphia.
The Mummers? Fuck the Mummers. When they sleep off the New Year’s hangover, they come to Wing Bowl. You want mobsters? Fat Ange, a.k.a. the Golden Buddha, a onetime Wing Bowl competitor, made a cameo appearance at Joey Merlino’s trial. You want blue bloods? When Philly Mag did a focus group on the Main Line, the assembled doctors and shrinks clamored, not for more articles about med mal, but for a saga about Wing Bowl. Politicos? Ed Rendell and Arlen Specter have made appearances, and — at least in Rendell’s case —not just to schmooze constituents. Yes, let them all come to Wing Bowl, and let Wing Bowl consume them, as it has consumed every other distinctive Philadelphia trait — our passion, our elevation of the lowbrow to high art, our self-loathing abandon — and hurled it back out in a gesture of vomitous, drunken love.
