Month: April 2020

After three more historical disputes, I decided that today it might be better to cover another contemporary trivial dispute, one that should be familiar to many of you reading: Is a hot dog a sandwich?

I don’t really think of a hot dog as a sandwich, as when I think of a sandwich I think of something between two slices of bread, probably because that’s what I’d get in my lunch box when I was younger. A longer sandwich like a sub/hoagie/whatever (I don’t really want to make that dialectical difference the subject of an article, but my mind could change) However, personal conceptions aren’t really a good benchmark for how to determine what is a sandwich, as I would never think of a hamburger as a sandwich even though it falls quite clearly into the sandwich camp.

The issue has become a sort of Internet meme, which first seems to have surged in 2015. That year, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, such an organization exists and is 100% serious) weighed in to declare that hot dogs should not be considered sandwiches. Perhaps because it does not overtly identify as an internet meme, the debate has persisted even after other contemporary memes have worn out their welcome. Many sources have weighed in with their thoughts on the matter in the ensuing years.

Amusingly, there has been a court case predicated around the definition of a sandwich, White City Shopping Center vs. PR Restaurants, LLC, which was decided in 2006. PR Restaurants, a New England Panera Bread franchisee, had, as part of their agreement to lease space in White City Shopping Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, become the exclusive provider of sandwiches within the shopping center. When PR found out that another company was to open Qdoba restaurant within the same shopping center, they cried foul, arguing because Qdoba sold tacos, burritos, and quesadillas they should be considered an additional sandwich provider. White City Shopping Center decided to resolve the dispute in court, and the Worcester County Superior Court granted their request to dismiss PR’s objection, stating that tacos, burritos, and quesadillas were not obviously included as sandwiches and thus the contract was not violated. However, this legal definition says nothing about hot dogs.

The original sandwich, at least the ones consumed by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich in the 18th century, were meats between pieces of bread, although the dish had probably existed for many centuries by his lifetime. Other kinds of sandwich involving longer bread rolls came into existence in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the general definition, a hot dog should probably be considered a sandwich, as it does consist of food between a bun. Sausage sandwiches do exist, after all. The main hangup, then, for those who are unconvinced that hot dogs are sandwiches, seems to be that the bun is supposed to serve as one solid piece, rather than the two separate pieces that constitute a sandwich. Ultimately, though, what matters most in the public perception is the wording of the issue, which is why the question is ambiguous to begin with.

(Also, the term refers to the sausage with or without the bun, perhaps adding further confusion.)

As it was two weeks ago, the subject of this week’s installment of Trivial Things will be on a riot over what was seemingly quite a mundane cause. And just like the Astor Place Riots mentioned two weeks ago, this riot happened in New York City, although no deaths happened this time. However, in the Astor Place Riots, there were at least issues of national pride at stake. This riot in 1922, however, was over styles of men’s hats. It wasn’t even a reflection of bigger social issues, as far as I can tell. It was just some pranksters who wished to take advantage of customs regarding the seasonality of hats.

Before the middle of the 20th century, most men (and often women too) would rarely leave home without a hat. While the kind of hat varied depending on what you could afford, some kind of covering was a necessity. Silk or felt hats were likely the most fashionable, but they would get rather hot during the summer, so many would substitute straw hats instead. While these hats, often called “boaters” for their use during summer boating activities, were initially only worn for informal events, around the turn of the 20th century they became acceptable wear for all summer activities.

However, a convention soon developed that straw hats were only to be worn during the summer without exception. Like the currently better-known tradition of not wearing white after Labor Day, it likely originated as a way of forcing people to be fashionable unless it was far too inconvenient. As hats were easily removable, though, their traditions could be more easily enforced, as hooligans would often make a game of knocking the hats off of anyone who was caught with a straw hat after the cut-off date (which varied from September 1st to the 15th.) Some mischief makers would get impatient and start knocking off hats before the generally-accepted end of straw hat season, though this would typically get them in more trouble. Personally, I wonder if these events were part of a general tradition in which young mischief makers were given certain days to go wild, such as the traditional “Mischief Night” or “Devil’s Night” before Halloween and (to a lesser extent) April Fool’s Day.

For whatever reason, in 1922 the straw hat hooligans were especially intense. It seems to have started when one group decided to stomp on the hats of some dock workers two days before the straw hat season was supposed to end. The dock workers did not take this well, and started a brawl which apparently blocked traffic on the Manhattan Bridge. The next day, the rioting just got worse, as gangs would prowl the streets with nails on boards to use for stripping people of their hats. Streets in affected areas were said to be littered with straw hats, The police eventually had to get involved, especially after plain clothes officers started to get their hats yanked as well. 

While this chaos did not kill the tradition of straw hat season, it did not last much longer. In 1925 President Calvin Coolidge wore a straw hat after September 15th, and in the years afterwards the tradition was enforced less and less. Boater hats also fell out of fashion, especially after the Great Depression. By the 1950s and 60s, men’s hats in general became more of a novelty, although the reasons why are likely quite complicated. 

(For further information on the straw hat riots, and on New York City history in general, the Bowery Boys podcast on NYC history released an episode on the riots recently, from which I derived much of the information in this post.)