Island Park hosts Memorial Day clam-eating contest

There are solemn ways to mark Memorial Day and honor those no longer with us. Monday's cherrystone clam-eating contest in Island Park was not one of them.

The winner, new world champion and clam-eating record-holder, was Juliet Lee of Germantown, Md., who downed 23 dozen clams in six minutes to take the $1,250 first prize. Lee, ranked ninth in the competitive eating world by Major League Eating, was happy to win but unimpressed by her total, which came after shoveling four to five hot sauce-doused clams in her mouth at a time.

"I still had more stomach," said the 105-pound Lee, 43. "I could probably eat 10 dozen more."

Replete with an emcee who touted the top eaters as "the four horsemen of the esophagus," the contest at Peter's Clam Bar was not for the weak of stomach. The clams were piled 11 plates high in the afternoon sun while Dominick Sinnona, an Island Park firefighter, carefully monitored the action to make sure all the shellfish went down safely.

"They could start choking," Sinnona said. "I'm checking for color changes."

No one choked and afterward some of the contestants ordered takeout. They got more clams.

Strategies for bivalve bingeing varied. Lee's husband, Joey, urged her on like a Little League coach, yelling "faster, Juliet, eat faster."

Eric "Badlands" Booker, of Selden, drank liters of water and pink lemonade to keep himself hydrated before attacking the clams.

The 380-pound Booker, who called his eight-dozen clams total "not my best effort," said he had expected clams to be more like oysters.

Booker, 39, a conductor on the New York City subway's No. 7 train, refused to blame his out-of-the-money finish on too much eating. On Saturday he downed 3.6 pounds of funnel cake, good for sixth place, at a Virginia contest. He's also competing in a calamari-eating contest on Saturday in Michigan.

"For a guy just coming up that turnaround is tough," Booker said. "But I've been doing this 12 years."