Paczki Day 2014 was a raging success. With a temperature well below freezing, the folks who braved the cold for one to three or more hours in line waiting for paczki from famous bakeries New Palace and New Martha Washington were nevertheless in good spirits.
Local news crews conducted street interviews, taking photos with paczki enthusiasts. A man leaving one of the bakeries offered some hard-won paczki to the news crew, some Hamtramck firemen stopped their full-size truck outside of grocer The Polish Market to pick up their own pastries, opting to skip the lines at the more popular bakeries.
Over at the Polish League of American Veterans (PLAV) Post 10 a paczki eating contest took place, with the winner eating a horrifying 20.5 paczki in 15 minutes (depending on the type of paczki/cooking method he ate somewhere between 5,125 and 30,750 calories in that one session).
Waits at Polish restaurants Polonia and Polish Village Cafe stayed steady throughout the afternoon and evening, and happy celebrants washed down their paczki with plenty of beer and booze from local bars. All in all, a solid holiday.
