Bagel Boys Behind-the-Scenes

The dozen bagel challenge. Can one man eat 12 New York City bagels in one sitting?

For the Spoiled NYC Facebook page, Michael Sorace takes the challenge. The live stream in its entirety can be viewed below, as well as can the images taken of the challenge, its surroundings, and its before and after.

Just starting. Michael is feeling 100% confident that he can eat 12 bagels in one sitting.

In the cab going to get the bagels.

We bought $38 worth of bagels for this. 16 bagels total, with a lot of sides.

Still streaming to the Spoiled NYC Facebook community of 664,000 people, we set things up.

Half the commenters think he can do it and half don’t. Michael’s confidence has me thinking he can eat these 12 bagels.

Setting up the camera for a more steady position.

12 bagels. Michael is going to try to eat them all.

First bite.

Dipping the bagels in cream cheese or water makes them easier to eat.

Michael’s beginning to have a hard time. The slow realization that this will be harder than he thought.

Michael sits down at the table. He’s finished 2.5 bagels at this point. Commenters during the live stream are telling him that he’s going to have to go to the hospital. He remains confident despite some feelings of pessimism.

Trying to push on.

Michael’s beginning to have a very tough time.

Michael dons a robe. He’s been trying to slug through bagel number five for a while. He has champagne on the table, which he will use to celebrate after, regardless of what happens. Our commenters are telling him to throw up and to stop.

We try soaking a full bagel in water to make it easier to eat.

Our viewers look on with disgust.

Michael doesn’t think he can do it. We decide that we’re turning the dozen bagel challenge into the half-dozen bagel challenge. Now Michael only needs to eat 6 NYC bagels. The commenters are okay with this. Michael’s almost there.

The soaked bagel. Michael’s so full that letting it soak in water doesn’t make downing it much easier.

There are still a lot of bagels left on the table. Michael’s feeling very sick.

In collaboration with the commenters, we decide that as a good alternative to not eating the six bagels, Michael can drink the water that the onion bagel sat in for 10-minutes. “Are you not entertained?“

Michael needs to take his button down shirt off because he’s very uncomfortable and doesn’t want to get vomit on it.

Michael drinks the bagel water.

We established well in advance that no matter what happened, we’d celebrate the live stream with champagne.

Michael wants to go to the gym to work off the carbs.

We search the Standard Hotel, where we’ve been broadcasting from, for the gym.

30-minutes after ending the live stream, Michael passes out on the couch. Clothes still on, all the lights still on.

Thank you very much to the 12,700 people who tuned in when we were live! You guys were great! And thank you to everybody else who watched after!

As of now, just two hours after we finished the stream, we’ve reached 97,000 people. By the end of tomorrow we expect that number to near half a million.

As said at the beginning of this post, this was for the Spoiled NYC Facebook page. We wanted to do a live stream that was relevant to the interests of the community while also being very entertaining. A dozen bagel challenge (thought up by Michael) was the solution.

Despite Michael not even making it halfway through the challenge, we’re very satisfied with how things went. People repeatedly tuned back in to see how Michael was doing and we were getting a lot of engagement, in terms of comments and returning viewers. We were having people all over the world watching, and we were excited to share such a ridiculous challenge with the world.

We got to give Spoiled NYC an engaging piece of content, while getting publicity for us, and having a lot fun.