April 19, 2010

FOCUS | Demolition & environmental engineering

Demolition of Coney Island’s historic Feltman’s Kitchen sets stage for hot dog hoax

PETER KENTER

correspondent

History recounts that Charles Feltman invented the hot dog on Coney Island in 1874. What, then, could be so unreasonable about finding a 140-year-old hot dog, encased in ice underneath the rubble of Coney Island’s historic Feltman’s Kitchen?

CNN network news crews covered the story as fact until officials of the Coney Island History Project admitted they’d assembled the supposedly fossilized wiener themselves as part of a publicity stunt to draw attention to the historic amusement park.

Crews from Connecticut’s Manafort Brothers Inc. demolished the old structure in February, with officials of the Coney Island History Project given permission to remove a few historic artifacts as the building was being razed.

The frigid frank — replete with bun and original receipt — was actually crafted off-site, removed from the demolition area with great ceremony, and then placed on display under a sign describing it as “Coney Island’s 1st Hot Dog.” Historians in on the hoax claimed that the chunk of ice had been insulated because it had been buried in the cool earth underneath the building.

Tricia Vita, a spokesperson for the history project, eventually came clean and admitted the fast food fraud was “a publicity stunt in the grand tradition of Coney Island ballyhoo.”

“I was surprised in the beginning at how many people believed it was true,” she told the New York Post. “But after reading all the buzz about it on Twitter and the Internet, I’m not really that surprised because people want to believe these types of things are true.”

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