Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest – 7.4.07

July 4, 2025

In the mid 2000s shortly before I moved to NYC my friend Adrianne was in a long distance relationship with a guy who ran a blog called “Watch Me Eat a Hotdog”. The blog was fucking hilarious and it covered all things hot dog including the Nathan’s Famous 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest and the world of competitive eating. I was kinda obsessed with the site and competitive eating. I loved an eating challenge. I had won my high school’s Homecoming pie eating contest three years in a row. I remember trying to see how many hot dogs I could eat in 10 minutes to see if I had what it takes. I ate 13 hot dogs in 12 minutes which is both impressive and also 40 less hot dogs than hot dog eating superstar Takeru Kobayashi ate that same year.

At the same time I was managing a two man dance pop band called the Gaskets who were blowing up locally but hadn’t done much outside of Richmond, VA where we all went to art school. Twice a month we were traveling up to NYC to try and change that. I started booking them shows around the 4th of July so I could actually see the hot dog eating contest in real life and I got to witness history in 2006 when Kobayashi broke his own record by one quarter of a hot dog in 2006.

In spring of 2007 The Gaskets got booked to play some small festival in the Hudson Valley. I rarely booked them daytime shows because they were always terrible, but the publisher of Blender Magazine got them the gig, so we weren’t going to say no. At this point I was living in NYC and working as a nightlife photographer while also working the 6am-3pm shift at a hotel restaurant. The only thing I wanted to do in the middle of the day was sleep. So when we got to where we were staying I took a short nap before the show, but for some reason the Gaskets just let me sleep through it. When they got back they told me the gig was terrible (as expected) but they had some good news: One of the handful people watching their set was Richard Shea, the co-founder of the IFOCE – the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

The Gaskets told Richard how obsessed their manager was with competitive eating and how I would always book them shows so I could watch the hot dog eating contest, so Richard offered us a spot to perform before the contest that year. I could not have been more excited. Not only would they get to perform in front of thousands of people at Coney Island, but I would just have amazing access to the hot dog eating contest and I could bring my camera…

I honestly barely remember The Gaskets performance that day, what I do remember is everything else. First of all they got to open for competitive eater Eric “Badlands” Booker who put out a rap album about competitive eating that I was obsessed with. I haven’t heard it in 15+ years and I am positive I could still sing along with it. Badlands goes by Badlands Chugs and his videos of him chugging massive amounts of liquid have gone super viral and he is a legit YouTube star with over 3 million followers. (He also happened to witness the second to last punk show I ever played a decade later.)

The contest itself was legendary. Kobayashi had dominated every contest he had entered until that point. His first contest in 2001 he nearly doubled the previous record. For the next six years he was blowing everyone out of the water… Until he met Joey “Jaws” Chestnut. In 2006 Chestnut came within two hot dogs of Kobayashi setting them up for a fierce head to head battle in 2007. In the qualifying round Chestnut had actually taken the world record with nearly 60 hot dogs but on July 4th Kobayashi broke that eating 63 hot dogs. That would have been the world record, if it weren’t for Chestnut eating an insane 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Kobayashi had lost and I had witnessed history.

Chestnut would go on to win the contest 16 out of the next 17 years, losing only once to Matt Stonie in 2015. Chestnut would break his record over and over again and owns the current record of 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes in 2021. Last year Chestnut didn’t compete and my friend Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti won which was incredible. Now if you are wondering how I became friends with a hot dog eating champion it’s because after taking these photos in 2007, I gave my business card to an eater named “Crazy Legs” Conti who looked at my website and quickly became a fan of my photography. One night I was at a party at Lit Lounge and I ran into him and told him I had watched a documentary about him and told him I was obsessed with competitive eating. He realized who I was and since we were mutual fans of each other we quickly became friends. Crazy Legs also happens to host the 4th of July after party every year which is how I became friends with Pat and his fellow Chicago eater Tim “Gravy” Brown.

Now it has been years since I attended a hot dog eating contest, but I still follow it every year and I have always had this dream of doing a photo project on competitive eating, going to some of the smaller regional festivals and documenting the weirdness that goes on around it. And maybe, tentatively, perhaps I might be working on doing something like that in the not so distant future.

Anyway, enjoy these photos from the day that changed competitive eating forever. It’s a real time capsule of the transition from competitive eating being a bit of a freak show, to the real sport it is today. These photos were taken on a truly terrible digital camera and the quality reflects that, but I think you can enjoy them anyway. Happy 4th of July. Eat all you can.

Dylan Moore In The Streets

June 18, 2025June 18, 2025

These photos have been a long time coming. I took these photos of Dylan Moore way back in October of 2023. My life was completely different back then. I was still living in NYC and I had no idea my landlord was about to raise my rent 40% in a few months and I would be “forced” to move to the beach in North Carolina. Dylan and I took photos in her hotel room and while we were shooting I mentioned this location that I had always wanted to use but never got the chance to do it right. She was down and off we went to Brooklyn.

At some point in the mid 2010s I was walking around my neighborhood in South Williamsburg and noticed this weird path that went behind the Peter Luger parking lot. I had no idea what was back there so I followed it and it was this hidden little spot next to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway where homeless people hung out and did heroin. Needles and caps littered the whole area, but I saw potential…

In early 2017 I was photographing my friend Ali Weiss for my book Instaxxx and I thought about that secret spot. It was winter and snow was on the ground so I knew no one would be hanging out there and we went back there and took some photos. Ali had never done nude modeling before so the photos were pretty tame, but I really loved them. I just knew one day I would get back there again.

A couple of time I tried to do shoots there but they didn’t work out. I had this idea of having a model fully nude laying on the barrier wall between the exit and the BQE. It was a terrifying assignment. You can hide behind the wall to get dressed/undressed but once you are up there you are fully exposed to hundreds of commuters. I knew I would only get one chance to do it so I was picky with models and we would have to find a day where there wouldn’t be a bunch of people shooting up back there. Things just never worked out… until October.

The day I photographed Dylan it was cold and rainy and perfect for this shoot and Dylan was a great model and was super up for it. We got back there and we shot the exact photos I wanted. Right before it started raining. I couldn’t have been happier. After that we went to my second secret spot, this time right off the subway platform. I wanted to shoot from the streets looking up. It was pouring rain and I probably should have brought a longer lens, but we still got some amazing photos of her up there, fully naked, while rain poured down on her.

I decided the first photos I would post of her would be the hotel shots and I wanted to wait a bit before I posted the ones I was really excited about. But then came January 2024 and I saw her in Las Vegas. We took a bunch of crazy photos of her in her fancy Vegas hotel room late at night. I loved these shots too and decided to post them next. They went up shortly after we got back from Vegas.

So why have these photos not gone up in the year and a half since then? I have no idea. I think it’s partly because I haven’t been shooting much down here and I wanted to spread her photos out. I don’t know any naked people in North Carolina and I haven’t been traveling as much as I thought I would. I didn’t go to AVN this year because there was a hotel strike and I didn’t want to cross a picket line, of course the strike ended just days after I canceled my flight. I did a few shoots in NYC but that’s about it. I haven’t been to LA in way too long so I haven’t shot anyone there, but this weekend I am gonna be in LA and I realized I still haven’t posted these, and it’s time.

Now, the big problem here is that every one of these photos is NSFW and I am no longer posting proper nudity to my site. As I have mentioned before we live in a puritanical nightmare and nipples are against the law now. So if you want to see these photos you have to go to the Girls of Driven By Boredom site and pay a small fee. But the good news is that if you do, not only will you see these photos, plus the two other shoots I did with Dylan, but you will also see literally hundreds of other NSFW photo shoots. It’s an incredible deal if you happen to be into nudity, my photography or hopefully both.

Click here to see all the photos of Dylan Moore naked in NYC.

Smiths Sunday – 6.6.10

June 11, 2025

Back in the day I didn’t go out on Sunday nights that often. There were some monthly parties or special events that I would hit up but usually that would be my one day off because there was only one place worth going to on a Sunday: Sway. Smith’s Sundays aka Morrissey Night at Sway was always a great party and the longest lasting party I can think of running from 2003 to when the club closed in 2015. When Smith’s Sunday founder Paul Sevigny opened Paul’s Casablanca the party just continued there. Truly a great party… the only issue is that I don’t like the Smiths.

Okay, there was one other issue, which is that Sway was a huge pain in the ass to get to from Brooklyn. A party had to be really good to get me to go Sway or Don Hill’s and Smiths Sundays was a really good party. But yeah I never got into the Smiths or Morrissey. I mean I enjoy dancing to the hits but the deep cuts aren’t exactly for me. Fortunately seeing all my friends made it worth it… just maybe not every week like some of my regular spots.

Anyway, this night in June 2010 wasn’t of any particular note. I was just looking for a party that looked pretty fun to reupload and these photos had some fun stuff in them. I went back and looked at my notes and apparently it was the first night I hung out with the Kari Ferrell formerly known as the Hipster Grifter. I recently finished reading her book (go buy it!) and this must have been right after she moved back to NYC after a short vacation in prison. Her and I apparently met up in the Lower East Side and just walked all the way across the city which is the kinda thing I miss so much since I moved to a place with no sidewalks. We then met up with my old pal Rony Alwin aka Rony’s Photobooth who was in NYC visiting and then we went to Sway.

This was just a random Sunday night like a million other Sunday nights a Sway but there was an appearance from Noel Fielding and his long term partner Lliana Bird who according to the internet he had just met. I had no idea who he was until I posted the photos and a bunch of people told me about it, but as a massive Great British Baking and Taskmaster fan I would for sure know who he was now. Aggy Deyn was there which was awesome because I hadn’t seen her in ages and honestly it was probably the last time I ever saw her. That’s one of the weirdest parts of this Vintage DBB project is realizing that all these people I was friends with, I just never saw again. I would see them every night and then one night was the last night and that was it. It’s extra tough when you didn’t see those people ever again because they died. This gallery has photos of two different friends who both happened to be named Dylan who are both gone and my guess is they aren’t the only people I photographed that night that have passed. Getting old is the worst.

Anyway, that’s all I got for today. I really do want to reupload stuff more regularly but it just takes a lot of time and while it’s a lot of fun, it’s rarely a priority. I am working on a couple of projects at the moment so they have been taking my attention, but hopefully a big one will be wrapped up soon.

Okay, now go look at some 15 year old photos from Smiths Sunday at Sway!

Two NSFW Parties, One Night – 5.16.07

May 28, 2025

I wanted to go really far back into the archives for this latest Vintage Driven By Boredom post for a couple of reasons, 1) It’s always interesting to see my work from before I had a decent camera and after I had just moved to NYC and 2) Because honestly I need a reason to promote my pay site, Girls of Driven By Boredom. Living in North Carolina, I don’t know any naked people and the only time I do new NSFW shoots is when I am traveling and I haven’t done that in a minute, so if we wanna keep my Girls of DBB subscribers happy, we gotta dig into the archives and I found the perfect night.

In May 2007 I had lived in NYC for under a year and I had been bringing a proper flash into the club for maybe two weeks? (*Editor’s note: I went back into the archives and the first time I brought a flash to a club was three weeks earlier to the day.) I had started Driven By Boredom in 2001 but there was this window of time when it was under construction and the new layout was going to be designed in WordPress (I am still using it to this day) and so I wanted to get used to WordPress so I started a site that just posted random nudes from “alt porn” websites and would use an affiliate code that would like to those sites and I would get paid a tiny bit of money if people signed up. I only ran that site for a couple of years but for years a $30 check would just randomly show up from those days. Two of those sites I promoted were Gods Girls and Burning Angel.

Gods Girls was pretty much a clone of the OG tattooed girls site, Suicide Girls. It featured a bunch of Suicide Girls models who were pissed off at Suicide Girls for their shitty treatment and bad contracts. Gods Girls actually won a lawsuit against Suicide Girls nullifying those contracts. God Girls and Suicide Girls were both just fairly tame nude photos, but Burning Angel was a proper porn site and they just happened to be based out of Brooklyn, and they became a big part of my social circle in my early days in NYC.

So yeah, on May 16th 2007 there were two parties, just a block or two away from each other, that were hosted by these two sites. The first one was at a bar called Sutra for one of my all time favorite weekly parties High Voltage. I would have been at this party no matter who was hosting, but the fact that a bunch of Gods Girls were going to be there was an added bonus. This was my first stop of the night. I met a bunch of girls I knew online for years and I did a nude shoot in a bathroom with a model named Charlotte who I actually reconnected with recently thanks to posting one of these photos on @VintageDBB.

At the party I ran into two friends of mine Apathy & Ariel (see photo above) who were nightlife regulars who also happened to be semi professional naked people so the three of us left High Voltage and went up the block to Lucky Cheng’s for the other party called Porn For Peace which I believe was a fundraiser for victims of the War in Darfur. The party was mostly people from the NYC fetish scene but there were a bunch of Burning Angels there and that’s is mostly who I photographed. Most of the photos from this party are NSFW so they are gonna be exclusive to Girls of DBB, but I left in enough for you to maybe get the idea. Eventually I went back to High Voltage, because again, that party ruled.

Just some bonus tidbits from the night. I had a terrible roommate for three months who left without paying a bunch of bills and this night is one of the only times she ever left our apartment. My old pal Julius Onah was at High Voltage, and you might recognize him from the fact that he directed the new Captain America movie. I had a little cameo in his first movie and it’s so amazing to see what he’s done since then. And honestly I thought I had a third point, but apparently I can’t figure out what that is so just enjoy all the photos.

There are 62 photos from the night in the gallery below and 94 photos in the gallery on Girls of DBB so you might want to sign up for that site. There are tens of thousands of NSFW photos there already and I will continue to hit the archives for more… See you guys soon.

Girl Talk – 8.23.09

April 30, 2025

I want to start this throwback post with an even older tangent. It’s 2004 and I am going to art school in Richmond, VA. In my free time I am managing this two man dance pop band called The Gaskets. They are one of the biggest bands in Richmond, but they have just about zero following anywhere else. So when we got a slot on this electronic music showcase in NYC we couldn’t have been more excited about the opportunity.

We drive up to NYC the night before the show and stay with my friends in downtown Brooklyn. The next day we jump on the subway and see some movies or whatever we did, it was 20 years ago, my memory is a bit hazy. But what I do remember is that when we get back to Brooklyn, our car is gone. Apparently we parked too close to a hydrant and got towed. We have to be at this show and their one instrument, a Yamaha RM1X sequencer, is locked in the truck of the car. Turns out our car is at the impound lot at the Navy Yard and it’s gonna cost $250 to get it out, and that doesn’t include the ticket. The lot closes in in less than an hour. We don’t think we are going to make it but we get on the Subway and get down there as soon as we can. I can only imagine what it looked like to locals when they see three hipsters absolutely sprinting through a pretty bad neighborhood trying to get there before the lot closes. I think we actually got there slightly after it closed but we somehow managed to get it out anyway.

When we get to the show it’s in the basement of the Delancey. There might be 25 people there max. The show was pretty fun anyway. These days when you hear electronic music you are probably thinking EDM, but this was a lot of supremely weird noise acts and the kind of rappers that are more influenced by jam bands than hip hip. The Tom Tom Club because their son was performing. My friend Luca, aka Drop the Lime/ Curses also played that night, but I didn’t we didn’t become friends until years later. There was another artist there who would hit play on his laptop and then just kinda run around the crowd. I didn’t get it at all. He went by the name Girl Talk.

A year later The Gaskets get asked to play this big art party in Richmond. Half gallery, half show at one of the bigger venues in the city. Not a lot of local acts could headline there, maybe us, Municipal Waste and Avail so we just sort of assumed The Gaskets were the headliner, but when the flyers went up, Girl Talk was headlining. I was legitimately pissed. Not only were we not headlining, but we were opening for some guy who played other people’s music and just ran around the club. I didn’t get it. We almost dropped off the bill. But when that night came I finally understood what Girl Talk was all about.

Girl Talk doesn’t make sense when there are 20 people in the crowd, but when there are hundreds, it is absolute chaos. I have photographed him a half dozen times and his shows are more fun than probably any other DJ although he used to have t-shirts that said I’m Not A DJ so maybe I shouldn’t call him a DJ. But whatever the case he’s so much fucking fun live.

Okay, now, after all that, we finally get to these photos that I am re-uploading. We go back in time to summer 2009 and the infamous Jelly NYC Pool Parties are on the Williamsburg waterfront, which I guess is now Domino Park. These parties were always a blast, but they also brought out a bunch of randos and as someone who was very serious about being a hipster, they were a little to basic or something for me. I pretty sure that’s a joke, but I would always rather be in some small bar than outside at festival or something. That being said the Jelly parties were legendary.

Going back through my original blog post apparently it started raining in the middle of the show and that’s why I started shooting the crowd more than the actual performance. I was trying to protect my camera a bit and there was as much chaos in the crowd as on stage. People were pushing through trying to get on stage to join the fun. A bunch of photographers were up there too, ruining my shots so the crowd was the better option anyway. Nothing annoys me more than photographers getting in the way of the show. Stop making that shit about you. The only exception if if you are working directly for the artist or the event, and even then, get your shots and get out of the way.

Anyway, the show was still a blast and after the show I ran into a bunch of friends. Man I miss just knowing people wherever I went. RIP Curtis. A few of us went over to Brooklyn Bowl for the after party. I honestly just went because Brooklyn Bowl had pretty damn good food and I wanted some BBQ but I did take a some photos there too that are at the end of this gallery.

These photos really capture a moment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can just see the beginning of the end of the short time period where it was the center of cool. The waterfront is still there but apartment buildings were going up where there were factories. The Jelly NYC parties were still happening but they were no longer at McCarren park pool. The crowd was becoming less hipster, and more finance bro. You can just see it changing in these photos.

Okay, once again I have written 1000 words for no reason. I need to make these shorter and sweeter so I can do them more often, but I like writing and hopefully a few people are getting something out of this stuff. Hopefully I will be back soon but in the meantime enjoy some photos from August 2009.