Ryan et al - if anyone has a copy of the printed article, please post here. I believe it went into Saturday's RedEye, which is not available in the free lockboxes around the city, but only via home delivery.

Saw this t-shirt in the Think Geek catalog that arrived at my house yesterday and thought some of the folks in this thread might appreciate it...

Santander wrote:Ryan et al - if anyone has a copy of the printed article, please post here. I believe it went into Saturday's RedEye, which is not available in the free lockboxes around the city, but only via home delivery.

You can download daily copies of the RedEye from the site. Click on "Daily RedEye in PDF" from the "About" page.

http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/about/

Dmnkly wrote:

jsco wrote:What annoys me? Intolerant people. especially those that insult others because of their own sense of superiority.

jsco... If you reread that post, I think you'll discover that he isn't criticizing people who love hot food (in fact, he clearly places himself among them), nor people who, as you say, climb the ladder because their tolerance increases, but rather the "chest-beating hot food as a litmus test for machismo" crowd.

Do you not also find that irritating?

I did read it carefully. Yes he does clearly place himself among them with a smug sense of superiority over people who do get into those contest. If you notice, I also refer to the fact that I would get into hot pepper eating contests with others, maybe not directly stating it, but I was relying on the reader's ability to draw conclusions.

And no it doesn't annoy me. What does other people's behavior matter to me as long as they aren't hurting anybody, infringing on other's rights or making a nuisance of themselves?

If people want to get into chest thumping contests about how hot they can take it, fine by me. Truth be known I've gotten into a few and it isn't always a machismo thing. Sometimes it's the competitive spirit. In fact, the only people I've lost to, in terms of hot food, aside from my brother and a native Thai chef, are females! So it's not all machismo.

In college I had friends that loved to have litmus tests for machismo in various ways, especially after some alcohol. I even competed in some, and nobody would take me for a chest thumping machismo guy, but I do have a competitive spirit and some guys do tend to like to one up each other.

Also, the fact that people are doing it is a good thing in my mind. It means the market for hot food has expanded. There is more awareness. There are a lot more hot food products out there that are marketed towards people. I can go into more restaurants and have a spicy option or have a variety of hot sauces available to me. I remember when my friends and I would hunt out restaurants that offered a variety of hot sauces or some extra hot food. I no longer need to do that, though if I did, I'm sure LTH forum would make the quest a lot easier than it was in the pre-internet days.

Remember the chili store in North Pier? Maybe it would have been able to succeed in todays market environment.

These kind of contests aren't limited to hot foods either, what about food eating contests? Do you hold equal disdain for Kobayashi or Sonya Thomas?

Great, I pick a fight on my second post to the forum after reading it for years. I didn't intend to, but judgemental comments steam me and sorry for the ones I made. But I fell into the group of people the poster was criticizing, and I would definitely put myself in the class of hot food afficianodo too. My point was people who love hot food and people who get into hot food eating contests aren't mutually exclusive. In my experience, they are hot food lovers too, otherwise they wouldn't by trying to eat something over 100,000 scoville units!

jsco wrote:I did read it carefully. Yes he does clearly place himself among them with a smug sense of superiority over people who do get into those contest.

Soooo, you're saying it's wrong to assert superiority over people who eat chiles to assert their superiority?

I don't harbor the same level of disdain that Christopher does -- I mostly just find the quest for the extreme kind of silly -- and I sure as hell do my fair share of stupid stuff, but this really reads like the pot and the kettle, is all I'm saying.

jsco wrote:If you notice, I also refer to the fact that I would get into hot pepper eating contests with others, maybe not directly stating it, but I was relying on the reader's ability to draw conclusions.

Incidentally, I'm not sure what I said in that last post to merit this passive-aggressive response. I know people (myself included) sometimes read quickly and miss things. That's all.

I admit in the post I was the pot calling the kettle, and I will do so here. But I never asserted superiority over other people eating hot food.

I don't find the quest for the extreme silly either, I clearly placed myself in that group in both posts and I would still be doing so if my digestive system would let me. Unfortunately habeneros are as hot as I can go now.

Um, you asked me to reread the post, and I was pointing out that I had grokked the original point and made references in my original post to show that I had understood the original point.

People do silly things, but to criticize someone else for actions you find silly is, well kind of silly and a bit petty. No?

My criticism and original response arose from the fact that I was once one of those people that were being criticized, as if people who like to go to extremes in hot food don't actually like hot food. And my point was, as previously stated, that they are not mutually exclusive and you may be surprised that some of us actually go way out of our way for hot food experiences.

Now can we get back to some culinary chat? Or talk about the joys of hot food?

Yes. I do find competition in it's "extreme" forms bread and circuses.

...Kobayashi/Sonya Thomas...competitive eating is even more egregious in my book than chest-beatin' chile-eatin'(splitting hairs, really)...what further idiocy can I look forward to offered in a "competitive" spirit?

What you take as "superiority" I grok as a form(among divers) of criticism. I am not about to get into a debate re: misapprehensions of "negativity" and what I consider the LCD of discourse; "can't we all just get along?"

Eat chiles and beat chests with aplomb, pay me and my "superiority" no nevermind.

jsco wrote:I admit in the post I was the pot calling the kettle, and I will do so here. But I never asserted superiority over other people eating hot food.

Which was exactly my point -- whatever you may think of them, I don't think those comments were directed at you.

The people I suspect they were directed towards would be those like my high school roommates. After getting into an argument over who had a better heat tolerance, including invoking the prowess of their respective ancestries (Chinese and Indian, FWIW), they opted to have a contest. The only hot food to be found in the dorm's kitchen was a very large bottle of Sichuan chile oil. They grabbed shot glasses, each took a slug, grimaced, paused, looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, "This is really stupid." In their defense, they were 15. And I did the same. Two years prior, at the same school, I got tired of one of the guys in my dorm (a real a**hole who loved to throw his weight around) constantly bragging about his incredible heat tolerance owing to his glorious Indian ancestry (it was the former and not the latter that I found irritating -- hopefully that goes without saying, but there is it). So when he challenged any takers to a contest, little white kid that I was, I took him up on it and trounced him. I told myself at the time that I was seizing an opportunity to show up a belligerent jacka** (which I was) rather than toot my own horn, but it was still stupid. In my defense, I was 13. Sadly, many of the people who behave in such a manner (though it may not be quite so obvious as in these examples) have no such excuse. Not everybody is competitive for ego-driven reasons, but a lot of people are. You can have a friendly competitor and an ego-driven jacka** on the same field in the same game. Same with hot foods.

Point being, neither of these events had anything to do with a love of spicy food (though everybody involved did, in fact, love spicy food). It was just stupid posturing and spicy food was the means of expression. This is a very common phenomenon, and I firmly believe that this is what drives much (but certainly not all) of the quest for hotter and hotter foods.

jsco wrote:Now can we get back to some culinary chat? Or talk about the joys of hot food?

Hey, man... I love the spicy... provided that it tastes good!

(FWIW, yeah, I do feel the same way about competitive eating. I'm all for healthy competition, but I don't think the spirit of competition is so inviolate that it's noble no matter what form it takes. I do happen to think that stuffing yourself with 40 hot dogs as a means of competition is dumb. But hey, some people think baseball is dumb.)

The resulting article:

http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/red-03 ... 3005.story

Barzin Emami looks deathly ill. His face is drenched with sweat, his eyes wet with tears, and his nose nearly dripping, yet he continues to gnaw on hot wings covered with Red Savina, a pepper considered 65 times hotter than a jalapeno.

"I was kind of done after, like, five of these, but it's a testosterone thing now. I have to prove I can eat this whole basket," said Emami, 26.

...

The insanely hot dish is the brainchild of Chef d'Cuisine Robin Rosenberg, who introduced it during football season last year as a way for bar patrons to compete with one another over who can eat the most.

Case in point.

I skimmed the article, didn't read it carefully (disclaimer), but was disappointed not to detect any LTH influence. Not that there had to be--it was certainly Ryan's right to use the sources that worked for the angle he wanted to take. But it was also my right to be disappointed!

I took the bait and did the article, not sure what the problem y'all have with it is but I dont care either. Why are people on this board such snobs? I live in Lincoln Park and im 26 and love spicy food so I took the article for exposure, and if you read my quote it said "Usually the hotter the better for me, but I don't like it when it's a game-show type of thing. I don't just want to burn the hell out of my mouth." Who cares, if you got a problem with the writer or redeye than dont read it. The writer found me thru LTH and when I asked him if he would give mention of the site he couldnt give me a "yes" answer that it would make it into the printed story but said he would put it in. We also talked about the fact as to why people on this board were such pricks to begin with, why would you expect anything from this guy when you treated him like crap? If you dont want people using the site for research or to find people who like food for an article than why not just make private with a monthly fee?

Also before the snob replies come, my dad bought his house on Altgeld and Racine in 1979 and I have lived in LP ever since (born in 1981), so dont give me any of this garbage about the people in LP, yeah 85% are annoying people from some garbage suburb but theres 15% of us who have been here forever and arent anything like the stereotype given and even so ive never seen such snobbery like that on LTH as I do walking around Lincoln Park. Titus.

Yeah, I'm not sure I understand why LTH should've gotten any mention, either. I certainly understand the sensitivity given some other articles we've seen with poached content, but I don't see how that applies here at all. Ryan tried to get in touch with some people through the board who spoke to him privately, and most of what's been said here wasn't really applicable to the piece as written

Titus (Da Beef) - congrats on the story and good soundbites. I don't think anyone here regrets or reproaches you for getting in touch with Ryan, and certainly nobody is stereotyping you. You actually seem to be sterotyping the average forum member as a snob or prick, which seems unfair given the content of your post.

Thank you for mentioning your LTH affiliation both here and to the author; the only reason this was important to some of us is that several substantive articles have lifted very specific ideas and terminology from the site without the minimum attribution that would be easy and neighborly. RedEye doesn't have space or expectations to do that, and the current article is much wider-ranging anyway. The author (who is not a food reporter or critic, by the way) had an idea in mind when he started and was not familiar with LTH. I was glad to see the scientific perspective (from U of C experts, no less) represented in the finished product.

I think that you did a great job, Titus. This is a great opportunity to thank you for making some great recs on here.

I have far more appreciation for your approach than the attack dog mentality that a couple of folks here employ with some regularity. Your recommendations add something more than criticism...and i really appreciate that as do the large majority of LTH posters.

Don't let the attitudes of one or two complainers wreck your estimation of this fine place.

I invited Ryan to come over here because there are some really interesting, knowledgable, good natured food folks here like you. The behavior of some folks, in reaction to Ryan's post, was quite embarrassing to me.

Thanks, and also thanks to everyone else on this board for the wonderful reviews, tips, pic's and everything else this site brings to us foodies. Let me apologize too for the comments made above, I didnt mean to signal out the whole forum, its just that every now and then when someone new posts or joins and makes a thread that already exists it seems there are a few who signal them out and expected them to read the whole site before realizing some things are already discussed. I too was once a newcomer and dealt with the same stuff mentioned above but it didnt scare me off or make me not want to post b/c a few people had snobbish responses but think of the others who didnt come back because of it. Now back to the food.

Dmnkly wrote:Yeah, I'm not sure I understand why LTH should've gotten any mention, either.

I'm trying to figure out if this is in response to my comment. It might not be, but I've gone back through the thread and don't see any other likely candidates. So, in the event it is in response to my comment: I didn't say LTH should have received any mention in the article. I only said that I was disappointed it didn't.

If the above is not in response to my comment, never mind!

Da Beef wrote:Thanks, and also thanks to everyone else on this board for the wonderful reviews, tips, pic's and everything else this site brings to us foodies. Let me apologize too for the comments made above, I didnt mean to signal out the whole forum, its just that every now and then when someone new posts or joins and makes a thread that already exists it seems there are a few who signal them out and expected them to read the whole site before realizing some things are already discussed. I too was once a newcomer and dealt with the same stuff mentioned above but it didnt scare me off or make me not want to post b/c a few people had snobbish responses but think of the others who didnt come back because of it. Now back to the food.

I still think supposed/misapprehended "snobbery" has nothing to do with "criticism."

Addressing this idea that *potential fonts of information* are turned off and away because they post new threads on well-trod subjects(and are called on it)...well...that's what Chowhound is for...seriously...

...it's called reinventing the wheel...

riddlemay wrote:

Dmnkly wrote:Yeah, I'm not sure I understand why LTH should've gotten any mention, either.

I'm trying to figure out if this is in response to my comment. It might not be, but I've gone back through the thread and don't see any other likely candidates. So, in the event it is in response to my comment: I didn't say LTH should have received any mention in the article. I only said that I was disappointed it didn't.

If the above is not in response to my comment, never mind!

It was, I see I misunderstood, and I retract my comment