Zine Friends – 4.25.15

I don’t know about you guys but had a zine filled weekend. The Brooklyn Zine Fest was in town and thanks to Wizard Skull and Killer Acid there was another fest to take place the same weekend called Zine Friends at Cotton Candy Machine in Brooklyn.

I went to Zine Friends Saturday and the Brooklyn Zine Fest Sunday. The plan was to shoot them both for a Village Voice story that my partner in crime Pinky Guest was working on but I was honestly more excited about the Brooklyn Zine Fest because I collect primarily photo books and zines and Zine Friends was mostly cartoonists and illustrators. That being said it featured a bunch of artist that I really dig like Wizard Skull, Matt Crabe, Jennifer Calandra and my buddy Nick Gazin’s talented sister Penelope.

It ended up being infinitely better than the Brooklyn Zine Fest which was a depressing collection of overly earnest political zines including zines about how make your zine more sensitive when dealing with race/gender issues. There were about five tables with Black Lives Matter signs on them but I think the only actual black person I saw was running the black lesbian zine table. I saw about 7 zines about menstruation from all different authors. Not that all these things don’t have a place in the world, I just didn’t trek all the way out Brooklyn Heights to get lectured.

So in the end I only ended up shooting Zine Friends and I got zines from Wizard Skull, Matt Crabe and a split zine from Penelope Gazin and Tuesday Bassen. I also picked up a pretty cool zine at the Brooklyn Zine fest called Corroded about acid etched graffiti.

In related news you should buy one of MY zines! I only have a couple copies of Fuck LA left and Food Tattoos and Dinner With Igor both have less than 50 copies remaining. Get stuff now!

Now click here to see some photos from Zine Friends at Cotton Candy Machine!

Zine Friends

Zine Friends

Zine Friends

Zine Friends

Zine Friends

Comments (0)

Hockey Is A Game

Most of my regular readers know I am a sports fan but I try and keep that stuff to a minimum because I know you guys are here for the photos I take and not my take on the Miami Dolphins and Washington Capitals. That being said, I decided I should probably address what happened the other day since I keep getting texts from people I haven’t seen in years because my face ended up all over the internet this week.

This week has been a pretty awful one. I went to DJ Jess’ memorial where I was served papers for a law suit that I have almost nothing to do with (but still have to hire a lawyer) and on the way home the car that I was borrowing from my parents to help them move got totaled by a guy who was running from the cops. I hurt my back in the accident and had to cancel on a shoot with Indigo Augustine and miss shooting the final Trouble & Bass party for the Village Voice. I went there to try and shoot it but I had to leave after 10 minutes because my back hurt so much.

The next morning I was supposed to go see my Washington Caps play the New York Islanders in the playoffs but with my back so messed up I wasn’t sure if I could go. I woke up that morning in a lot of pain but feeling much better than the day before. I decided to suck it up and go. And that’s when the weirdness began.

My friends and I are loud fans who make up our own chants and are fairly obnoxious but we don’t start fights and we don’t pick on random people. We just go there to have fun and cheer our team. Unfortunately our exuberance made us the target of some particularly awful Islanders fans. Most of them were great to us and bantered back and forth with us and gave us a hard time but in a fun way but there was some shit thrown at us and some vandalism and some stuff said to us that went over the line.

I ended up writing an open letter to the New York Islanders which talked about our day and I sent it to a few local DC bloggers and stuff. I was pissed and I wanted to gripe about my day but I didn’t even put it on the main page of this site. I ditched it over in the rarely updated B-Sides blog. I wanted people to read it but I didn’t expect what happened next.

Within an hour of me writing it it had gone viral. My Twitter handle @drivenbyboredom was the number one trending topic in the DC area. People started writing blogs and asking for interviews. I did a few of them and then started passing them off to the rest of my Caps crew because I didn’t get the worst of it, they did. I didn’t want to be the face of this thing. Today alone I turned down four TV interviews. The whole thing got out of hand.

I got a lot of love from Caps fans and some of the Isles enemies like the Rangers and Flyers fans but I also got message after message from Islanders fans apologizing for the dregs of their fan base. I have no problem with Islanders fans in general – they just happen to be the enemy this week – and it was great how many awesome Isles fans I have met this week.

Unfortunately there is a segment of way too serious Islanders trolls who have been sending hate mail and Tweet after Tweet and lying to the media about us. I have heard the craziest rumors about what we were doing and I did some more interviews to address some of that stuff. I don’t mind any of this. I shoot naked people for a living, you cannot even begin to guess how much hate I get. These trolls are fun for me but they are not fun for my crew. So I am gonna stop engaging and stop doing interviews because I don’t want my fellow Caps fans to get shit for me not being able to shut my mouth.

So this is hopefully the last of it, but I just wanted to link all the articles I can find about us for posterity. Enjoy reading about this super weird couple of days and for all the Islanders fans who aren’t drunken mouth breathing trolls I wish you guys a moderate amount of good luck and if you beat us this series I hope you take it to the Pens or the Rags. Cause those teams I actually hate!

To start with here’s my original Open Letter to Islanders Fans.

Here is the interview we did with Caps Radio’s John Walton. We compared it to an old school WWF style promo where we were going over the top with our anti-Isles rhetoric. It was supposed to be funny but in retrospect it has been used to say we were instigating.

Here is the first Washington Post article and here is the second.

The ESPN one was a good read.

Here’s a guy who called me a pornographer. That was a fun one.

And here’s an interview with an Islanders Blog where I tried to explain what happened.

The NY Daily News article has my reaction to the NY Islanders weak statement.

Puck Daddy agreed with my assessment.

Boomer Esiason talked about us.

And the rest:

Newsday – Sports IllustratedDeadspin – CBS Sports – OutsportsTed’s Take – NBC New York – NY Post

Anyway, what a weird week. But hopefully that’s the end of this nonsense and I can get back to posting photos of crazy parties and naked babes and fun stuff like that. Let’s Go Caps!

NYC Caps Fans

Comments (1)

Veruca James Is Back

Before I get to the sexy lady photos I just wanted to mention that the memorial for DJ Jess is tonight at 7pm at Webster Hall. I hope everyone who should know about it already knows about it but just in case now you know. Hope to see everyone. Also, Shaken & Stirred is doing their final night in celebration of Jess on the 22nd. It’s at the Delancey at 9pm and is free for anyone who wants to see a burlesque show while crying into their ascots. Now on to the nudes…

It is completely insane to me that the last time I posted a full set of Veruca James was in 2011. (Watch the video of that shoot here!) Since then I have taken so many photos of Veruca and she’s become a good friend but we never did a proper photo shoot until last January. And by last January I mean 2014. I shot these photos for a magazine that didn’t end up running them and I totally forgot about them until someone posted a 35mm outtake I shot of Veruca and Janice Griffith right at the end of this shoot. I realized not only had I not posted Veruca’s set but I also didn’t post the photos of Veruca and Janice together or the first set I ever shot of Janice. Clearly I needed to fix that.

So I immediately uploaded a mini app exclusive set to the Girls of Driven By Boredom of Veruca and Janice. It’s only like 15 photos but they are really fun and most of them fairly graphic. It seemed like a perfect thing to save just for the app. I also edited all the photos of Veruca and Janice so they are ready to go.

First up, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, are the pictures of Veruca James. She is responsible for some of my favorite naked photos ever. (Like this print you can buy in my Etsy store!) This shoot was a quick one in her hotel room during the AVN Awards so she is wearing a stupid AVN wristband and let’s just say we didn’t have a hair stylist available. Fortunately Veruca is fucking adorable and you will probably dig on these photos a lot.

Also, since I shot this for an adult magazine there are a bunch of porny shots that I don’t post on this site, but you can see them all on Girls of DBB with the set of her and Janice. The app is super cheap so it’s kinda a win/win. Just saying.

Now click here to see a bunch of NSFW photos of the radical and babely Veruca James!

Veruca James

Veruca James

Veruca James

Comments (1)

Rex Manning Day – 4.8.15

It’s pretty hard to try and get back to work after yesterday but life goes on for the rest of us and Wednesday I photographed a really fun and unique event, the type of party that Jess would have loved, and I really need to show you some pictures.

Once again my friends at BBQ Films put on a fucking amazing event. Ever since I went to their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles screening I have been working with them to help them in whatever way I can to keep creating these amazing film experiences. I got to work with them on the planning of their Back The Future event and I helped brainstorm their Weekend At Bernie’s party but this is the first film they have done since TMNT that I wasn’t at all involved) and that made the surprises that much better.

In 1995 Empire Records hit theaters. I saw it at the time and then never watched it again. I was a huge grunge fan in the years before Empire but when Kurt Cobain died I completely abandoned “Alternative” for punk rock. I remember liking Empire Records but I certainly didn’t have any love or nostalgia for it. When BBQ announced they were doing Empire I didn’t really get it.

I get it now. For the 20th anniversary of the film BBQ turned the record store and venue, Rough Trade NYC, into Empire Records. It was a fully interactive space with scenes from the movie recreated all over the store. There was a booth where you could get your head shaved like Deb did in the movie. There were quarters glued to the floor like AJ did in the film. They had a button making booth and a photo booth that recreated the fictional Rex Manning video for Say No Mor Mon Amour. The whole BBQ staff cosplayed characters from the film with pretty impressive detail. It was an amazing feat.

The screening itself was pretty tame until my friend and BBQ team member Leah Taylor started passing out brownies in the middle of the film. If you recall there is a scene in which Ethan Embry’s character Mark eats hallucinogenic brownies while watching a Gwar video and gets sucked into the video and gets eaten by the World Maggot.  During that scene the movie started skipping and Gwar showed up!

Gwar (minus Dave Brockie RIP) came out to thunderous applause and one of the audience members (who had earlier won the “Mark Experience”) got to play Mark and was fed to the World Maggot live! If that weren’t enough suddenly the World Maggot started vomiting back up Mark and suddenly Ethan Embry was actually on stage! He got the crowd going crazy and then brought out Johnny Whitworth who played AJ in the movie. The two of them rocked out with Gwar and pulled two more raffle prizes for the “Warren Experience” and the “Gina Experience”. After the intermission the movie started playing but I had to miss the rest of it. I had work to do.

BBQ Films had asked me to make a sacrifice for the cause and after thinking it over for about thirty seconds I agreed. I would let Ethan Embry shave my head for a press photo op. They took me up to the head shaving station and Ethan began shaving my head for the benefit of about 20 members of the press and a handful of people who decided that watching me get my head shaved was a better idea than finishing the movie. It was a sensual experience for both of us and gave me a reason to use Periscope for the first time (I’m @drivenbyboredom on there). I also ended up on Vanity Fair’s Instagram which was mildly hilarious.

By the time my haircut was finished so was the movie but the party wasn’t over yet. The band ARMS, who had opened the party, did a set made up of the Empire Records soundtrack and everyone who had stuck around was loving it. The “Gina Experience” ended up being the opportunity to come on stage and sing Sugar High with the band. Meanwhile the “Warren Experience” was happening in the main room and involved getting to chase one of the BBQ Films team who had “shoplifted” around the store. I was expecting it but it was a great moment for people who had no idea what as going on until this scene from the movie was playing out in front of them.

The whole party was amazing and I actually went home and finished watching the 30 minutes of the movie I had missed. I didn’t give a shit about it at the time, but I now have a new love for Empire Records. Happy Rex Manning Day.

Damn the man, save the Empire and click here to see all my photos of Rex Manning Day at Rough Trade NYC.

Rex Manning Day - BBQ Films

Rex Manning Day - BBQ Films

Gwar - Rex Manning Day

rex-manning-day-36

Rex Manning Day - BBQ Films

Rex Manning Day - BBQ Films

Gwar - Rex Manning Day

Arms - Rex Manning Day

Ethan Embry - Rex Manning Day

 

Comments (0)

The Death Of New York Nightlife: RIP DJ Jess Marquis

As more and more luxury buildings move into the Lower East Side and bars close and rent goes up people are increasingly talking about the death of New York nightlife. More of my friends are moving to LA and nothing seems fun anymore. I am sure a lot of that is just me getting old, but New York nightlife took a huge hit last night with the death of DJ Jess Marquis.

I took some really fun photos at this Empire Records party last night but those shots are going to have to wait while I deal with the death of one of my first friends in NYC and a true champion of the old New York.

I have had a bunch of friends die in my life, and too many recently. I think about Ease Da Man all the time and Dust La Rock’s passing was a gut punch but as much as I miss those dudes neither could come close to the impact that Jess had on my life.

Jess’ legendary party Trash was my favorite party in New York of all time. It was one of the first parties I went to and when it was at Rififi it was as good as any weekly party could ever get. Jess also threw Rated X which was probably the most insanely fun and debaucherous party outside of Motherfucker which of course Jess also DJd. His Thursday night party “in the seedy basement of Lit”, NC-17, was one of the best places to get people naked.

Honestly, now that I think about it Jess’ parties are responsible for a massive amount of my sex life. I mean I met all the Burning Angel’s at his parties and they formed my dating pool for years. I met my first girlfriend in NYC at Trash and Jess even through a party for the 10th anniversary of me losing my virginity!

Jess threw every birthday party I had in NYC including my 27th birthday party which was easily the most insane night of my life and my 30th birthday party which was also the last birthday party I ever had. He threw Driven By Boredom anniversary parties and was one of the reasons I went to the AVN Awards for the first time. He just had such a big impact on my life.

I wouldn’t be doing anything I am doing today if it weren’t for him. I started nightlife photography to take photos at his parties. He might have been the first person ever to pay me to do it, even if it was just in drink tickets or something. I wouldn’t know porn people if it weren’t for that AVN trip. I started shooting for the Village Voice because they loved all the nudity I got at crazy parties. Nearly every one of those parties Jess threw.

I always told Jess how corny I thought he was. He was this drama kid turned nightlife icon who was so over the top about everything. I am so apathetic and Jess was the exact opposite and his love for burlesque and Morrissey made me roll my eyes. I blame him for the fact that I know all the lyrics to a dozen fucking Smiths songs. He was just so fucking silly and would make me take photo after photo of him and wouldn’t tell anyone he was probably 5 years older than they all thought he was. I gave him shit for all of it, but I would kill to care about anything as much as he did all of this shit.

I can still remember all the lines he delivered night after night at his many many parties. “What’s up you sexy motherfuckers?!” and “Two for one drinks at the bar! If you buy one you get one free!” are the first two that pop in my mind right now but I know I will never have to worry about forgetting his voice. And I will never forget his face because he never aged and I have more photos of him than probably any other person I have ever photographed.

Speaking of, Jess was a great nightlife photographer and I used to look at his work every day when I was first shooting party photos. He just put down the camera at some point to focus on music but for my money he was as good as anyone capturing the downtown scene in New York. I am not sure what’s going to happen to his stuff, but I would kill to get a copy of his hard drive so I could do a book of his nightlife photos.

In recent years I haven’t spent a lot of time with Jess. He stopped doing Trash to focus on doing his own music. He wanted to tour and stop playing the same new wave songs every single night. He was still throwing tons of parties but I can’t stand going into the city anymore so I never saw him. I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time we hung out but I was following all the shit he was doing and I know he was on top of my shit too.

Jess was the defender of nightlife. He was responsible for giving wave after wave of young kids coming to New York a sense of what NYC was like back in the 70s and 80s and making us understand that it was our responsibility to carry on that tradition and make sure to get as weird and as fucked up as humanly possible.

Jess I fucking love you man and it fucking kills me that I am never going to get to take your picture again.

Today I spent an hour pulling tons of photos I took of Jess. There are a lot of these that aren’t great photos and there are so many great ones I couldn’t find. At some point I just couldn’t look at photos of Jess anymore. That being said I pulled nearly 80 photos of him and I hope everyone who loved him, and I know there are a lot of you, gets a chance to check out this gallery.

Click here to see some of my photos of DJ Jess Marquis from pretty much 2008 on. The earlier stuff is terrible.

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

RIP DJ Jess

 

 

 

Comments (7)

Austin Rodeo In 35mm

After SXSW ended I stuck around Austin for a few days. It saved me a couple hundred dollars on my flight and allowed me to hang out with my local friends and eat food and honestly just chill the fuck out. SXSW is exhausting and it was nice to have a couple days to relax. On my last day in town I went to my first ever rodeo and it was pretty memorable.

Before the rodeo I was promised pig racing so my buddy Mike and I got there early but unfortunately missed the last pig race before the rodeo by about 15 minutes. We still had some time to kill so we hit the petting zoo and a bunch of carnival rides. It was $1 ride day but someone gave us a free ride wristband so we went on rides until I was ready to puke (probably the deep fried Oreo’s fault).

The rodeo itself was fairly interesting and for some reason we got our seats upgraded which was nice. The cattle roping shit is pretty wild and the little kids riding sheep, aka mutton busting, was amazing. During the bucking part of the rodeo someone got their head kicked in by a horse which was fucking insane. We thought he might have died but I didn’t find any news about it so I figured he was okay. The bull bucking was kinda disappointing because no one managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds but there were a few wild moments.

The highlight of the day was honestly the petting zoo. I really need to get a bunch of goats to hang out with. Not sure they would do super well in my New York apartment but I guess you don’t know until you try. Does Amazon offer Prime shipping for goats?

While I was at the rodeo I shot a roll of black and white film and another roll of snap shot 35mm color stuff. The color work is pretty mediocre but I think you guys will like some of the black and white stuff. Let me know what you think. Maybe I will dedicate more of my life to the rodeo…

Click here to check out all the 35mm photos from the Austin Rodeo!

Austin Rodeo

Austin Rodeo

Austin Rodeo

Austin Rodeo

Austin Rodeo

 

 

Austin Rodeo

Austin Rodeo

 

Comments (0)

America Is Back

What seems like a decade ago (but was really probably like 8 years) I met a lady named America at some random dance party on the Lower East Side. She instantly became one of my favorite people to photograph but then for some insane reason she moved to fucking Orlando.

In the years that followed I got down to Orlando a couple times and I was lucky enough to get to hang out with America again. The first time we went on some fun adventures but I didn’t get to take any great photos. You see, my camera was broken in an incident where I helped trash the penthouse of a Miami hotel so I went to a flea market in Orlando and bought a plastic camera that took just fucking horrible photos and bummed me out so hard when I got them developed.

A year or two later I was back in Orlando and the guy who hired me (You still owe me money motherfucker!) got America and I into Disney World and we took tons of awesome photos and she cemented herself as one of my top three favorite people to photograph of all time. (She is also one of the most fun people to hang out with of all time, so it works out well.)

After that I never went back to Orlando again and she moved anyway. She had been living in weird midwestern places that I don’t understand and eventually landed in Austin, TX. I keep in touch with her a bit through social networks and the like but I hadn’t seen her in years and somehow I missed the fact that she was living in Austin, making cool movies under this insane new name Erica. Fortunately for everyone I ran into her in the street randomly and we got to hang out again!

It was so awesome to see her again and we got to eat tacos and fun stuff like that, but most importantly as far as you guys are concerned we got to take more photos! And these photos are extra sexy and stuff because we were in a big bed instead of an amusement park for kids!

Erica is a legit actress and stuff so she has agents and the like that don’t want her naked on my website, which is a totally reasonable thing I guess, so these photos are all fairly safe for work, even though they are also totally babely. I did hook you up though with a handful of extra sexy shots over on the Girls of Driven By Boredom.

In fact, in honor of getting to shoot Erica again I teamed up with my friends over at Me In My Place to cross promote and I am giving you guys a coupon code for 20% off Girls of DBB! The code is “america” and you can use it to see tons of outtakes, extra sexy shots and high resolution versions of the stuff already on this site. It’s really cheap and now even cheaper and totally worth checking out. It works as an app on your smart phone, but also works on desktops and laptops and probably weird shit like Chromebooks and Surface 3s.

I have some more good news too. America is coming to NYC for pretty much all of April and clearly I will have to take a million more photos of her being awesome. Huzzah.

Now click here to see all the super babely photos of the fucking amazing America!

America

America

America

America

America

 

Comments (3)