Seven months ago I ran into Crazy Legs Conti, New Yorks most notorious professsional eater, at Lit Lounge.  I recognized him and struck up a conversation. Turns out he is actually a fan of this site after I gave him one of my cards at the Nathan’s Famous 4th of July hot dog eating contest a few years ago.  He told me that every year he throws and after party and all the eaters come and drink as much as they ate and that I needed to come take photos.

Well here we are in July and Crazy Legs invited me to the party just like he said and people drank just as much as he said.  Nearly all the eaters from Nathan’s showed up except the ladies and Bob Shoudt.  Joey Chestnut was there, as were Tim “Eater X” Janus and Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti who were first, second and third in the contest respectively. Legendary eaters like Eric “Badlands” Booker and MLE commissioner “Hungry” Charles Hardy made apperances as well.  There were probably about 20 eaters in total all taking down shots of tequila during the almost three hour open bar.  By the time I got to thinking about leaving things were getting pretty out of hand.

The highlight of my night aslo involved drinking. I don’t actually drink except on rare occasions but I have a gift for chugging beer.  I am not sure why I was given this gift but I always had it. It was not something I developed or practiced.  I was just born to chug beer. My friends in college used to take me to bars to challenge frat dudes and win money betting on me.  To this day I have never lost. I made an off hand comment about it to Eater X and he told me that I needed to challenge Deep Dish Bertoletti. He told me Deep Dish was the best and he would take on all comers. He was game and we went pint of Bud Light to pint of Bud Light.  In his defense he had eaten 37 hot dogs only 8 hours earlier and he was allready drunk, but we tied. Seriously, it was dead even. So now I know that if I can stand toe to toe with the 4th ranked professional eater in the world in a drinking contest, I can probably throw beers down with anyone. I think this is an important thing to know about myself. In the world I live in of skinny jeans and gay dance parties it’s good to know I can man up when I am called to the table.

Anyway, I am clearly losing my mind due to lack of sleep once again, so I will stop this crazy talk about hot dogs and beer. What you need to do while I try to sleep for 15 hours is to click right here to see all the pictures of professional eaters getting really drunk at a midtown bar called Redemption.

Until tomorrow… Eat all you can eat.

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