Hasta La Ideas

“The shootings, the knifings, the beatings… old ladies being bashed in the head for their social security checks… Nah, that doesn’t bother me. But you know what does bother me? You know what makes me really sick to my stomach? It’s watching you stuff your face with those hot dogs. Nobody… I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog.”

– Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in ‘Sudden Impact’.

Got that, punk? Hot dogs are serious business, and conflicts regarding what constitutes a ‘real’ hot dog may turn nasty (or even deadly, when it’s Dirty Harry you’re disagreeing with).

The elemental, essential parts of the hot dog are not in dispute – a frankfurter sausage (or ‘frank’) and an equally long, sliced bun to place it in. It’s what goes on the dog that causes all the trouble and discord. The garnishings and condiments that top up hot dogs vary greatly according to personal style and regional tradition. Among those regional varieties are, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, there is at least one of everything in America):

• New York: hot dogs topped with steamed onions and a pale, deli-style mustard;
• Chicago: smothered in yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion and tomato slices, sprinkled with celery salt;
• Kansas City: topped with sauerkraut and melted cheese;

The NHDaSC also cites a Southern preference for coleslaw as a hot dog topping (imaginatively dubbed ‘dragged through the garden’). This also happens to be an essential ingredient of the West Virginia Hot Dog (WVHD), as described by wvhotdogs.com: “A true WVHD is a heavenly creation that begins with a wiener on a bun. Add mustard, a chili-like sauce and top it off with coleslaw and chopped onions (…) Different parts of West Virginia have variations on the theme but the common elements are sweet, creamy coleslaw and chili. Anything else is just not a true WVHD!”

Wvhotdogs.com is dedicated to “honoring and expanding awareness of this culinary delight”, by reviewing Hot Dog Joints (HDJs) in the state, and by providing this map. It details in which West Virginia counties coleslaw, that essential part of a WVHD, is habitually standard, optional or nonexistent as a topping. Interestingly, it is in both of West Virginia’s panhandles that coleslaw is least used.

If slaw dogs are a typically West Virginian phenomenon, it would indeed be understandable that they are less prevalent in the state’s most outlying areas. No HDJs in the Eastern Panhandle’s two easternmost counties (Jefferson and Berkeley) offer coleslaw topping, and it is ”usually not offered” in Morgan County, the westernmost one of the Eastern Panhandle’s three. Coleslaw is similarly inubiquitous is the Northern Panhandle’s two most (Hancock, Brooke) and least (Ohio, Marshall) extremitous counties. 

In West Virginia’s ‘mainland’, only Marion County mirrors the panhandles’ unfamiliarity with coleslaw. Strangely, nearby Barbour County is exactly the opposite: and island of hot dog orthodoxy in a sea of coleslaw renegades, where the topping is merely “optional” or “usually available”. In Barbour, as in the rest of the state (except the renegade north and northeast, and Cabell and Mercer Counties in the southwest), coleslaw topping is “standard”. As wvhotdogs.com states: “If you have to ask for slaw on a hot dog, it’s not a true WVHD.”

It would be interesting to know if this coleslaw deficiency in the state’s north and northwest corresponds to any broader cultural differences in the state. As for the origin and spread of coleslaw as a hot dog topping in West Virginia (and beyond), wvhotdogs.com has the following theory:

“Legend has it that slaw was first served as a hot dog topping at The Stopette Drive In on Route 21 near Charleston, West Virginia. This was during the Great Depression when weenies and cabbage were two of the most plentiful and affordable food items. The Stopette sold hot dogs with slaw for only a few years before every eatery in the area copied them. Within a few years restaurants all over southern and central West Virginia were including slaw as a standard ingredient. As many West Virginians left the state looking for work in the southern United States they took their taste for slaw on hot dogs with them. Slaw Dogs are now found in many areas of the south where West Virginia natives settled.”

And finally, it has this to say about ketchup on hot dogs: “There are many reasons why one shouldn’t eat ketchup on a hot dog any hot dog.First, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council’s Hot Dog Etiquette rules dictate that no one over 18 should ever eat ketchup on a hot dog. Ketchup is destructive of all that is right and just about a properly assembled hot dog since its sweetness and acidic taste overpowers food and disguises its true flavor.”

Many thanks to Rich Rostrom for sending in a link to this map.

The charming city of Leyden in the Netherlands (’Leiden’ in Dutch, pop. 120,000) could without much hyperbole be called the Dutch Oxford. The town boasts the country’s oldest university and is home to museums, libraries, botanical gardens and other institutions connected to its position as the country’s prime centre of learning. Leyden is also home to Oudt Leyden, Europe’s (and possibly the world’s) oldest pancake house.

Located in the province of South Holland and possibly occupied since Roman times, Leyden was granted city rights in 1266. The city’s cloth industry flourished after the arrival of weavers from plague-ridden Ypres in the 14th century. In 1572, Leyden joined the rebellion against Spanish overlordship of the Netherlands and withstood a Spanish siege. In 1575, William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch rebellion, founded the university at Leyden in gratitude for its role in the war against the Spanish. Leyden still celebrates the lifting of the Spanish siege every year on October 3rd, with a parade and a lot of food and drink.

Leyden flourished both academically and economically during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, becoming Holland’s second city after Amsterdam. As in Amsterdam, the layout of the expanding city was determined by grachten (canals). The city’s luck changed with that of its textile industry, pushed out in the 18th century by Holland’s high wages. The city shrunk, and would only start to grow beyond its Golden Age-sized belt of grachten at the turn of the 20th century.

Over the centuries, Leyden was home to many scientists, including Constantijn Huyghens, René Descartes and Albert Einstein, as well as a number of notable artists, such as Rembrandt (a native of the city) and other Old Masters. Leyden was also the city in which Theo van Doesburg founded De Stijl in 1917, together with Piet Mondrian. De Stijl was both a magazine and a movement, founded on the principle of abstracting things down to their geometric essence.

De Stijl was in part a result of the Netherlands’ non-participation in the First World War, isolating Dutch artists from Paris, then the cultural capital of the world. Van Doesburg sought to counter this isolation by starting an art magazine and art movement, inspired by the cubism that was making (square-shaped) waves in the wider art world. At first, the group’s neo-plasticism was expressed in manifestos rather than in art or architecture, but over time, its ideas would exert considerable influence on people like Mies van der Rohe and Rietveld, and more broadly on the course of 20th century art and architecture in the Netherlands and beyond.

This map of Leyden, in the style of De Stijl, was made by Jos Agasi in 2007, the 90th anniversary year of the movement’s founding. “The map was originally made for a project by RAP Architectuurcentrum here in Leyden,” writes Mr Agasi. “In 2008, together with Sanne Dresmé, I organised the project `U bevindt zich hier – Een reis door Leiden in 80 kaarten` (`You are here – A voyage through Leyden in 80 maps`). That project also featured this De Stijl map, which I subtitled: `Design for a stained glass window in Leyden city hall`, hoping the city might find it a nice idea. I made a sketch on my site of how it would look. Who knows, one day it will come true.”

“I was inspired by works by Theo van Doesburg, who lived in Leyden from 1916 to 1920. My map is a homage to his work, which I admire greatly. The map started out as a graphic exercise: I was curious to find out whether it would be possible to ‘translate’ Leyden city centre to a map, using only verticalm, horizontal and diagonal lines. I managed to do it — all the streets and alleyways in Leyden are on the map!”

Many thanks to Mr Agasi for allowing me to use his map.

“This physical (hence, objective) subdivision is interesting per se, since some countries considered Mediterranean actually are mostly looking towards the Atlantic (Portugal fully and Spain mostly), others considered central European actually lie fully within the Mediterranean basin, such as Hungary, or mostly (Slovenia, Austria). Even Germany has a big fraction of its area within the Mediterranean watershed!”

Russia is no longer the hub of a worldwide Communist empire, nor the main ingredient of the Soviet Union; but the Kremlin still insists on wielding power in its old sphere of influence, an area of special interest to Russian foreign policy that it calls the Near Abroad.

The most recent – and, to Russia’s other neighbours, most intimidating – example of that insistence was this summer’s brief Russo-Georgian war, in which the Russian Army established final control over Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, eventually recognising their independence.

In the years immediately following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia was too weak to prevent what it qualifies as EU and NATO ‘encirclement’ (an old Russian geopolitical worry). But now, a resurgent Russia flush with oil money insists on checking what it sees as further encroachment by the EU and(especially) the US.

The term Near Abroad therefore excludes far-flung corners of the worldwide socialist experiment, such as Vietnam or Cuba (although Russia maintains good relations with old-school leftist regimes such as Cuba’s and new ones such as the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez).

It also seems to exclude what used to be called Eastern Europe, states that were independent before 1945 and are again now, almost all firmly lodged in western institutions such as the European Union and NATO (i.e. East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria; of the former Yugoslav states, only Slovenia is fully integrated).

An interesting twilight zone are the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), in NATO and the EU, but with considerable historical baggage vis-a-vis their giant neighbour to the east – they were independent between the World Wars, but part of the Soviet Union thereafter, and each harbours considerably large Russian minorities.

The Ukraine however, with 45 million inhabitants and about the size of France, is firmly within Russia’s Near Abroad. Its east is ethnically mainly Russian (Ukrainian nationalism tends to be a western thing), and Russia has strategic interests in the Crimea (Russian until 1954, when it was transferred to the Ukraine, but still home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet). The country itself seems divided on whether it is an eastern outpost of the west, or a western outpost of the east.

The 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’, in which pro-western candidate Viktor Yushchenko successfully contested the rigged results of the presidential election that was ‘won’ by his pro-Russian opponent Viktor Yanukovich, seemed to place the Ukraine firmly in the western camp. Ukrainian politics has however seen several reversals of fortune since that time, proving that Ukraine is unique among the former Soviet republics: pro-western and pro-Russian sentiments are almost completely in balance.

That balance is not spread out evenly across the country. This map shows which of both Viktors was the victor in each of Ukraine’s regions in the (contested) November 2004 presidential elections. Each candidate has won in a remarkably contiguous area – Yushchenko winning the northwestern half of the country, Yanukovich the southeastern part. Both Moscow and the West are eager to have the populous, and potentially prosperous Ukraine in their camp. Will the fault line running through the Ukraine become the front line of a Second Cold War?