The New Yorker:

By Colin Stokes

I was halfway through eating a hot dog in Columbus Circle one recent weekend afternoon, when I overheard a tourist say to his kids, “You have to realize you’re in New York.” In case being directly outside Central Park wasn’t enough to remind the children of their whereabouts, a real New Yorker had just barged through the family’s carefully staged photo, leaving them with photographic evidence of the city’s trademark impatience. My hot dog, I thought, paired well with this quintessential New York scene.

I was on a mission, disguised as a jaunt: to walk around the edge of the park and eat a hot dog from every stand I encountered. This initial goal quickly proved impossible, as I was confronted by a veritable throng of carts in Columbus Circle alone. (There are around thirty license-paying concession stands inside the park, but a much larger number operating along the outskirts.) So I resolved, instead, to eat at as many as I comfortably could without lapsing into a frankfurter-induced coma. New York’s hot-dog carts, for all their ubiquity, can feel invisible—more or less indistinguishable vehicles, dishing out what, to the untrained palate, seems like indistinguishable food. I wondered what kinds of surprising variations I might find, and whom I might meet along the way.

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