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After a year of free pizza, Home Slice winner is hungry for more
I hate asking people what they do, because I presume they presume that all I care about is how they make money when in fact I mean to say, “How do you spend your days?”
Likewise, Seth Mazow, who is at the end of a year of free pizza he won last year from Home Slice Pizza, hates it when people ask him what he does, lest he sound like an unmotivated, unemployed slacker who doesn’t have a job, which is true (the jobless part, not the slacker part).
So when I met him for a few slices of pie last week at what has become his second home on South Congress Avenue, he gave me the reply he gives everyone who asks him what he does: “I eat pizza.”
It’s been almost a year since Mazow won Home Slice Pizza’s Hands on an Eggplant Sub contest, above, which means he gets a free large pizza with unlimited toppings, standard or premium, every time he visits. Now that he’s unemployed, that’s four to five pizzas a week, he says. Mazow figures he’ll have eaten about $4,500 in free pizza when it’s all said and done at the end of this week.
And on Saturday, it’s all on the line — er, eggplant — again during Home Slice’s Carnival O’ Pizza, where Mazow knows he’ll have some serious competition to win the coveted prize a second time, but he’s determined to repeat.
It’s not that Mazow doesn’t want a “real job” or isn’t supremely talented. He’s worked in Silicon Valley and, during this year’s Legislative session, at the Texas state capitol. He’s one of those work-smarter-not-harder folks who has managed to live abroad for extended periods of time on several occasions in the past 10 years.
As his work at the capitol was winding down in May, he started Year of the Pizza, a blog to chronicle his free pizza adventures. Mazow’s social media and blogging skills (he was one of the first bloggers in the nonprofit sector years ago) have helped him turn free meals into big publicity for both himself and Home Slice.
And no, he doesn’t get paid extra to say all those nice things about the pizzeria around the corner from his house. “I really do think their pizza is the best in town,” he told me as we split an overloaded pie with kalamata olives, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni (on my side. He doesn’t mix meats and dairy.), broccoli, garlic, basil and, best of all, anchovies.
But on Saturday, he’s prepared to spend days with his hand on the sandwich to win the prize again. He says he’s even got some secret techniques he’s been working on to A) remain standing the whole time and B) not pee in his pants. (Contestants only get a bathroom break every 10 hours and no diapers are allowed.)
All for the love of pizza, which even after a year of consuming it almost every day, Mazow says he still looks forward to eating.
Photo of eggplant contest from Home Slice Pizza.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Playing with your food
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By heidi
December 1, 2009 2:33 PM | Link to this
I just absolutely LOVE this little story. I take it Seth isn’t sick of pizza. Is Home Slice a chain? I’ve never heard of it.
By Addie Broyles
December 1, 2009 3:10 PM | Link to this
Hey, Heidi! Home Slice Pizza is most definitely a locally owned business. In fact, one of the things Seth and I discussed was why the owners don’t open more of them around town. It’s such a popular, well-thought-out concept that it would do well all over the city.
You should try to swing by, at least for a slice, some time. It’s some of the best pizza in town!
By kunde
May 8, 2011 2:30 PM | Link to this
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