A few months ago, I wrote a poem about coneys. It's a long poem, nine sections in all, and in writing it I realized that coneys are my happy food. I grew up in a town that likes its hot dogs with something called Texas hot sauce, and eating coneys in Cincinnati with my cousin, and now I live in a state that claims it's the home of the coney.
The poem makes me hungry.
Now I'm writing an essay based on that poem--sort of a loose history of the coney. The essay can't be a complete history, but it's interesting for me to see where coneys came from and how they've managed to dot small sections of the upper Midwest and western New York.
Please note that my findings are intentionally limited to states or cities where I've resided. I have no intention of making this an exhaustive compilation of coney sites or restaurants, since other people are way more committed to that, and I don't profess to actually know anything about hot dogs. In this manner, I am sloppy like Detroit-style.
My research basically consists of chasing ghost links all over the Internet and eating local coneys when I feel like it. Also, yes, I have decided that I prefer the plural of coney as coneys and not conies.
I'll be posting my coney-eating here, and maybe one day the essay will find a home and someone will want to see pictures of hot dogs a stranger ate. That's the great thing about the Internet.
