What started as a dare last year morphed into a giant street fair and pizza-eating contest, and this year’s Slaughterfest is slated to be bigger and badder than last year's debut.
ATLANTIC CITY — Mixing an emotional alliance to a worthy cause with a naturally excitable personality can sometimes result in things like … well, Slaughterfest.
Michael Hauke — one of this year’s Top 40 Under 40 honorees — has never been one to back down from a challenge, and attempted to silence critics who said he couldn’t eat 30 slices of pizza in one hour.
Instead the pizzas silenced him, at least temporarily, but Hauke then extended the challenge to anyone else brave enough to try the death-defying eating feat. Ultimately this led to his proclamation that “although public gluttony is mega cool, we wanted to raise awareness for a very special charity called Alex’s Lemonade Stand.”
Hauke and some of his cohorts at Tony Boloney’s in Atlantic City have lost close relatives to cancer, and Alex’s Lemonade Stand is a foundation that stemmed from the front-yard lemonade stand of pediatric cancer patient Alexandra Scott. The disease eventually took her life, but the foundation persevered to raise millions of dollars and help save the lives of thousands of other cancer-stricken children.
“My mother [Patricia] passed away from metastatic breast cancer after a 15-year battle, my uncle recently died of cancer, my head pizzaiolo Mario [Dorazio]’s mother passed away from breast cancer, my fiancé Jill had a close relative pass away — so between all of us and so many others being touched by this disease, it was important for us to do this for a worthy cause,” says Hauke, whose dare led to the mega-hit street fair/pizza-eating contest he dubbed Slaughterfest last year.
“It was just going to be for fun the first year, something fun and stupid to do, and Mario suggested Alex’s Lemonade Stand because the little girl who founded it is from his home town [in suburban Philly]. And in a way, I could hear my mom telling me, ‘Give it to the kids — they need to have a fighting chance,’ and once we notified Alex’s, they got on board 100 percent. They bent over backwards to help us with this in any way they could.”
While the first Slaughterfest (May 15, 2010) exceeded Hauke’s hopes in terms of size, scope and funds raised for the charity, he believes the second annual event — slated for 11am-8pm Saturday, May 14 — can top 20,000 attendees. One reason to believe he may be right is that the event’s special guest is the Philly-born ?uestlove (pictured left), drummer for the Grammy award-winning band The Roots. Scoring ?uestlove — who does DJ stints in Atlantic City every once in a while — for the festival might serve as another tribute to Hauke’s powers of perseverance.
“Basically we went through the usual channels you go through to try to get a celebrity to host your event, and the more people told us we’d never get ?uestlove, the harder we tried,” says Hauke. “Initially we were told it would be 80 grand for The Roots [also the house band for the show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon] and 40 grand for just him, and I’m telling them, ‘Look, this is all for charity. I’m not paying $40,000.’ Little by little we came at them and sold them on the fact that this is for charity, and we got them to send him here for four grand.”
Local Slaughterfest sponsors (of which AC Weekly is one) helped defray the cost, and The Chelsea hotel put up the cash for ?uestlove’s travel expenses.
“And once he knew what we were all about, he was totally on board about being part of it,” says Hauke. “I’m grateful to all the people and sponsors who got behind this and helped get him here.”
The Chelsea C5 nightclub and the Tropicana’s 32 Degrees Luxe Lounge are hosting pre-parties Friday night (May 13), and Showboat’s House of Blues Foundation Room is hosting a post-party Saturday around 9pm.
Along with ?uestlove, there will be about a dozen other musical acts performing throughout the day Saturday, a beer tent, children’s events on the Boardwalk, and over 100 vendors. The main event is the pizza-eating contest starting at 1:30pm, featuring 16 competitive eaters from across the country.
Local comedian Mike Marino will entertain during the competition.
Hauke noted that many of the businesses that got behind Slaughterfest are those competing for the same consumer dollar as his shop, Tony Boloney’s.
Marino lives up to his nickname, 'New Jersey’s Bad Boy of Comedy.' He still utters his signature line, 'Vinnie, get the bat.'
Let’s take this in simple steps. First step, pizza and beer go together. Got it. Second step, the Atlantic City Convention Center is the site of the sixth annual Atlantic City Beer Festival, better known as “The Celebration of the Suds.” More than 75 different breweries will showcase their products. But also among the exhibitors will be several food vendors including Tony Boloney’s, one of the city’s premiere pizza restaurants. So beer vendors and pizza vendors also go together. Well, at festivals anyway. Got it. So what then is the next step? Well obviously, it’s Tony Boloney’s pizza infused with beer. And we’re not talking about the infusion that happens in your mouth when you bite a slice and swig your beer. We’re talking totally infused. “Basically, we’re cooking the beer...
Flash forward five years to October 2009. After a couple months of running the current location as a cafeteria-style operation, Hauke closed, rebranded and created the Tony Boloney’s concept.
May is a bittersweet month for my grandfather, Albert Perdeck. He looks forward to celebrating Mother’s Day with his beautiful wife of 61 years, as well as his wonderful daughter and all of his grandchildren. It’s a time for celebration and as they say in Yiddish, Nachas. This year my husband and I hosted Mother’s Day in our home with a nice meal that everyone is still raving about. (Yes, I cooked, and it was awesome.) All was good, but deep down it’s also a sad time for my grandfather because on May 11, 1945, he was almost killed when two Japanese Kamikazes hit his Navy Aircraft Carrier ship, the USS Bunker Hill, in Okinawa, Japan. Before both Kamikazes...
May is a month of openings in the southern New Jersey shore area. Flowers open, beaches open, Boardwalk french fry stands open ... it goes on and on. But most of all, visitors and residents shake off the winter blues and open themselves up to a little warm weather fun.
For the seventh year, 40 of our region’s most dynamic young leaders have been honored by the Greater Atlantic City Jaycees and Atlantic City Weekly. Some of them are community leaders and volunteers, some are entrepreneurial, others are extraordinary talented and inspiring. One thing they all have in common is that people from around the region nominated them to be one of this year’s Top 40 Under 40. Once again, we are excited to present this year’s honorees inside this annual issue. Our community is a richer one to live in thanks to them.
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