On a bender!
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, don’t be shy, and prepare to gaze in wonder at spectacle of the human body! World records will be set! Steel will twist like licorice before your eyes! Human hair will be used like never before!
You might have expected barks like this in the Coney Island of a century ago, but you don’t need to step into your time machine to enjoy the spectacle: Today, Coney Island returns to the golden days of yore during the third annual Olde Time Coney Island Strongman Spectacular, with about a dozen muscle-bound showmen from all over the world demonstrating various feats of strength, from bending horseshoes to breaking arrows with their throats to pulling cars using hair and teeth.
The strongman culture is having a bit of a renaissance lately, most recently due to the documentary “Bending Steel,” which was praised at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and featured Chris “Wonder” Schoeck, one of today’s competitors. But one of the biggest feats on display will be the revitalization of the classic Coney Island spirit, which has been battered by redevelopment and Hurricane Sandy.
“What better way to really open up the season than with the strongmen?” says Adam “Real Man” Rinn, the show’s co-host and dean of the Coney Island Sideshow School.
In a tribute to their showman forefathers, the spectacle will open with a death-defying escape from a milk can filled with 75 gallons of water, only the second time the trick has been done in Coney.
“Houdini didn’t even perform this escape in Coney Island,” Rinn says.
But the real treat this year is Mike Greenstein, son of the legendary strongman the Mighty Atom. Greenstein will demonstrate his toughness by pulling a car with his teeth, an impressive feat — even if he wasn’t 92 years old.
And that’s just the tip of the muscle that will be on display. Read on to meet four of the all-stars flexing their skills today:
Mike “The Guy Who Don’t Need No Nickname” Gillette
Age: 51
From: Las Vegas
Day job: Security trainer and consultant
Weight: 185 pounds
Height: 5-foot-9
Speciality: Iron body feats, such as breaking a stack of bricks on his stomach with a sledgehammer.
Today, he will try to set a world record for snapping as many arrows against his throat as he can in 60 seconds.
Gillette was drawn to iron body feats because they are more relatable to audiences. More people know what it feels like to be hit in the stomach than they know what it takes to bend a steel rod, he says.
“Most of the guys there are just legitimately freak-show strong,” he says. “They’re doing stuff no one else does. The more people we have doing amazing things, the more inspiring it can be to people.”
And in case you doubted his tough-guy credentials, Gillette once was a bodyguard for Rambo himself, Sylvester Stallone, when the actor’s family visited Vegas in 2011. He had to keep him clear from droves of adoring fans.
“People from Asia who don’t speak English can say the word ‘Rocky’ and can scream it,” he says.
Steve “The Crusher” Weiner
Age: 49
From: Merrick, NY
Day job: Budget manager for New York Power Authority
Weight: 240 pounds
Height: 6-foot-2
Speciality: Combination feats, such as putting a granite sphere on his shoulders then hoisting a fire hydrant that is strapped to his head
Weiner entered the field 10 years ago. The former high school discus thrower started with bar bending, then got into tearing phone books.
“The appetite just feeds on itself, seeing what you can bend next,” he says.
His biggest achievements to date are lifting the back of a Honda Civic and hoisting a 411-pound stone.
“It’s not just going out and performing,” he says. “The scene is one of camaraderie and support, and one of nostalgia also. It’s not a competition of any sort.”
Chris “Haircules” Rider
Age: 37
From: York, Pa.
Day job: Forklift driver
Weight: 320 pounds
Height: 6-foot-4
Speciality: Hair strength; also co-host and co-founder of the event.
Rider discovered he was a natural strongman seven years ago when a friend challenged him to rip a phone book in half — he did it the first time. Then he tried tearing a deck of cards and ripping a license plate — all of which the power lifter did on the first attempt.
“All my friends and family wanted to see it. Nobody would believe it,” he says.
He then moved on to hair feats such as pulling a car with his mane as a tribute to the strongmen of yore.
“Everybody has had their hair pulled at some point in time, everybody has an idea of, ‘Oh wow, this is just ridiculous; that’s a lot of pain tolerance,’” he says. “The hair and the scalp is just like any other part of the body; it adapts over time.”
Chris “Wonder” SchoeCk
Age: 45
From: Astoria, Queens
Day job: Personal trainer
Weight: 155 pounds
Height: 5-foot-8
Speciality: Bending steel
Don’t let Schoeck’s rail-thin frame fool you: He can bend metal with the best of them. His singular dedication caught the eye of filmmakers who made him the star of the “Bending Steel” documentary.
“I’m by far one of the leaner guys up there,” he says. “ ‘Wonder’ fits very well with my size. You wonder how a little guy is able to generate the force to do these things.”
He got into bending three years ago initially as a way to try out new isometric strength exercises, pushing into steel to develop wrist strength. Eventually, that steel started to bend. No one else at his gym could do it, but then he started researching online and discovered a community of strongmen.
“I found a group of people that changed my life,” he says. “They made me a different person, they filled me with positive powerful feelings.”
For him, it’s all about the mental dedication the feats require, whereas the crowd only sees the bent object. “What they don’t see is how much tenacity and hard work went behind that,” he says.
