In Coney Island, New York, Edward Krachie wolfed down 22 hot dogs, buns included, to win the annual Nathan's Famous Hot-Dog Eating Contest.

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Competitive eating has gone extreme in recent years, with globe-trotting contestants often taking top honors in events like Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4 at Coney Island in New York and Philadelphia's Wing Bowl in February.

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Even an empty jetty, like the melancholy Steeplechase Pier at Coney Island in New York, draws Russian and Chinese fishermen eager to net the tiny fish that gleam in silver schools round the piles, for the little fry will catch bigger fish, and the bigger ones (mostly herring) are worth curing and eating.

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In 1998, I saw the band at a small venue in New York called Coney Island High.

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That said, for five years now I have kicked off the New Year by taking a plunge in the icy waters of New York's Coney Island, a tradition I was introduced to while living in Dublin, where I joined hundreds of locals who make an annual Christmas leap from a rock at Sandycove and baptize themselves in the freezing Irish Sea.

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Officials at the New York Aquarium, which was damaged by superstorm Sandy, said the Coney Island institution would reopen in late spring, when a new sea-lion demonstration also will have its debut.

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Even as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was unveiling the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, consumers in New York City were carting old appliances to an electronics recycling drive in Coney Island.

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