The Little People Halloween Party – 10.31.16

Andy Shaw was one of the first people I met in NYC. I was standing in line outside of some nightclub and he came up and handed me some flyer for the Shaw Promotion mailing list. Andy was one of the biggest promoters in NYC nightlife for a long, long time. 10 years later Andy and his wife JD (who I also knew from nightlife) have a kid and realized that they could take their nightlife and promotional skills and transition them into a market they didn’t even know existed: parties for kids and their parents.

Barely a month The Little People Party was born and every week more and more kids and their parents are showing up every Monday at an indoor soccer field in Williamsburg. They hire a DJ and a musician and have a photo booth and a liquor sponsor and all the things you would have at a night club but the difference is it’s marketed to tiny children and their parents.

Andy reached out to me because he thought it would be kinda perfect if he had an actual nightlife photographer show up to shoot it. “You have probably photographed most of their parents anyway…” I actually thought it was a great idea since I love shooting things people don’t expect me to shoot and besides how could I pass up a halloween party with babies dressed as pumpkins and stuff?

Now I realize it’s kinda weird seeing photos of babies on a site where you can see naked people and fights and drinking and madness, but Andy has a point. This is Brooklyn and most of the parents are in their 20s and 30s and probably have been on my site at some point themselves. So I thought it would be okay to post about. Besides how fucking cute are these kids?

If you are a NYC mom or dad make sure you check out The Little People Party on Facebook because they are announcing more events all the time and are about to launch an all day weekend event which seems like it could be pretty amazing if you have a micro human of your own.

Now click here to see a bunch of adorable kids dressed adorably at the Little People Halloween Party!

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

Little People Halloween

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Death Rites – 10.28.16

Happy Halloween, etc. On Saturday night I went to this party Death Rites at the Gateway. Last time I was there I ran into my friend Jamie Peck and she told me she was doing her Halloween party there. I had a weird time at the last time I went to one of her Halloween parties so I figured it was something to do… and it was.

My old pal Lauren Flax was DJing and there were a bunch of bands playing. I only saw two of them because I got there after midnight like an asshole. I saw Bootblacks and Xeno & Oaklander I think but I mostly spent my time on the roof because my costume was far too hot to wear inside.

I had no plans to dress up and I have been half-assing Halloween since like 2007 when I bleached my hair and cut it into a mullet to go as MacGyver. There is a new (and truly terrible) MacGyver on TV right now but I didn’t quite have it in me. But I do happen to have a terrifying spiked baseball bat that I actually carved myself for a college sculpture class and I did just get an amazing leather jacket… When I combined those two things with my roommates scarf and a gallon of hair product I ended up with a pretty convincing Negan costume which is probably the best costume I have had since I was Freddy Kruger when I was 8. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me in The Gateway with a terrifying weapon so my costume wasn’t quite as flawless as I wanted it to be. If you don’t know who Negan is and you feel like having one of the biggest moments of The Walking Dead ruined for you, please click here.

I am probably gonna go out again just so I can wear my Negan costume again but I kinda think I might just dress like him from now on… Maybe I will just roam the streets threatening strangers with a baseball bat until the cops show up.

Oh, right there was a party that I went to and there are photos to look at. Oh, and there was a make out coffin. That seems important somehow.

Now click here to see the photos from Death Rites Halloween party at The Gateway.

Death Rites Halloween Party

Death Rites Halloween Party

Death Rites Halloween Party

Death Rites Halloween Party

Death Rites Halloween Party

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Schott X Sailor Jerry Perfecto Launch – 10.26.16

Last night Schott NYC and Sailor Jerry launched their second collaboration. The first one was a pea coat to celebrate the 240th anniversary of the US Navy. This time they did a version of the classic Perfecto motorcycle jacket. This is the jacket that James Dean wore, that the Ramones wore, that pretty much every cool person since the 1950’s wore. The Perfecto is legendary. I actually own a vintage knock off that I love but the leather is all dried out and despite a gallon of leather oil I can’t get it soft again.

Fortunately for me I photographed last night’s party and got my hands on one of the greatest jackets in human history. Plus the Sailor Jerry version of the jacket has some pretty good touches like a red satin interior featuring a Sailor Jerry tattoo flash skull and another skull on the shoulder. Oh and did I mention the jacket feels like it’s made out of a tiny baby cow that lived his entire life in a bathtub of moisturizer? It’s unreasonably awesome and at this point I am just trying to make you jealous.

At the release party last night a tattoo artist named Jon Boy was doing tiny Sailor Jerry flash tattoos. Normally at these Sailor Jerry events they do normal sized flash, but Jon Boy is known for his tiny fine line tattoos and so they thought it would be cool to do micro flash which ended up looking real cool. When I saw his work I thought it was a little bit silly given my love for the thick black lines of American Traditional but talking with Jon Boy changed my mind in 2 minutes. This is a guy who knows what he’s doing and clearly gives a fuck about tattooing and unfortunately her ran out of time before I could get a tiny dagger.

Also, one of the first people to get tattooed I knew I had seen before and he told me he had been to a couple Sailor Jerry events I had shot so I figured that was it… but I checked Instagram this morning and realized he was pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini and while I have probably taken his photo before I really recognized him because he was the host of the tragically short lived Top Chef Just Desserts. And if you know anything about me you should know about my love for competition reality shows about food. Funny thing is that my friend Ashley Holt was supposed to come with me and she won Next Great Baker so they could have maybe had some sort of violent pastry fight.

Anyway, check out the photos from the jacket launch and when you see me out in my Perfecto make sure to rub on my aggressively soft and incredibly badass jacket.

Click here to see all the photos from the Schott NYC x Sailor Jerry Classic Perfecto launch party!

Jon Boy Tattoos Hanna Rad

Aaron Sagers & Jon Boy

Schott x Sailor Jerry Perfecto

Jon Boy Tattoos Johnny Iuzzini

Schott x Sailor Jerry Perfecto

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Lil Brown Eyes For Wood Rocket

Part four of my five part collaboration with Wood Rocket is here and it’s a fun one! Lil Brown Eyes returns with a pool party shoot shot in Los Angeles and Bryan Gozzling’s place. If you haven’t been paying attention I shot 5 shoots for Wood Rocket as sort of a continuation of the Road Strip video series for them I did back in 2013. So far we have seen shoots from Lily LaBeau, Lucy Everleigh, April O’Neil and now Lil Brown Eyes. The final one is gonna feature not one but three girls so look for that soon!

This shoot with Lil Brown Eyes isn’t very well photographed. It was super bright out and the light was wildly harsh and I didn’t have anyone standing around with a bounce card or anything because let’s be honest I am barely a professional. That being said, LBE is fucking adorable, the pool is beautiful and how great do her hot pink heels go with that giant inflatable flamingo? Plus at the end of the party she cooked us food and the shots of her grilling corn are kinda fucking amazing thanks to her actually being in the shade a bit. I should also mention that she did her pseudo corpse paint make up like that because she kinda thought it would look hilarious with the sort of 80’s Penthouse vibe of the whole shoot. I wasn’t mad about it.

So all the photos are on Wood Rocket but I uploaded about 15 of them to this site just so there would be something on this site for the archives but clearly go to Wood Rocket instead of looking at them here. They are on Girls of DBB too but no reason to go there when you have them for free on Wood Rocket, BUT I should mention that there is a VERY NSFW shoot of LBE and her “daddy” Bryan Gozzling from the weekend I met them on Girls of DBB that is probably worth checking out if you are a fan of these photos.

Anyway, go look at the Lil Brown Eyes pool party photos on Wood Rocket now!

Lil Brown Eyes

Lil Brown Eyes

Lil Brown Eyes

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Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade – 10.22.16

I have no earthly idea how I have lived in NYC for a decade and didn’t know about the Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade. I mean what the actual fuck? Tompkins is mostly known for riots and heroin addicts but on on one day a year you can go to a place with hundreds of adorable dogs just walking around dressed up like stuff? This is incredible and important.

So on Saturday it was cold and rainy and I had to wake up before noon, but it was all worth it cause I got licked by a bunch of adorable puppies and it was the best day of my life. I didn’t even cover the parade for anyone I just needed it in my life and I brought my camera because of course I brought my camera. I cannot express how much I wish there was a dog parade every day of the year. WHY ISN’T THIS A THING?

I don’t even know what else to say but if you don’t look at theses photos I don’t even know where your priorities are. Like what are you doing with your life that is more important than looking at cute animals dressed up to be even cuter? The answer is nothing. You are lying to yourself. Go look at these fucking photos now.

Click here to see all the photos from the Tompkins Square Park Halloween Parade!

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade

 

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Meet Jezabel Vessir

When I was in Chicago for Exxxotica my friend Heather Vahn introduced me to her friend Jezabel Vessir (or is it Visser? Her Twitter has both names and that’s fucking confusing). We ran into each other a few times that day and in the middle of the night on the last day of Exxxotica we did a quick photoshoot in her hotel room.

You may have noticed I shoot in a lot of hotel rooms and clearly that is mostly for convenience given that when I am traveling or people are visiting NYC they make for easy locations. They are not always so fun to shoot in because hotel rooms tend to have horrible light and random fixtures and things that get in the way of otherwise decent shots. But something happened at some point in my life and I started to love the look of hotel rooms… especially the run down ones and stuff. The hotel in Chicago was pretty nice, but I still love the realness of shooting in a room with luggage on the floor and awful hotel room light.

Aside from the hotel room vibe, Jezabel is fucking stunning. Like she is so unreasonably pretty and she has this puppy dog look when she’s just looking at you which is actually kinda amazing and then she smiles and that’s amazing too and I don’t know but I really want to shoot her again, and again and again. Hopefully I will get another chance at Exxxotica New Jersey in November if someone can give me a ride there…

I don’t know what else to say except Jezabel is wonderful and there are some extra bonus pictures on Girls of Driven By Boredom. If you had Girls of DBB you could have seen these photos two days ago too (and in high resolution). Just saying…

Click here to see all the photos of Jezabel Vessir (or is it Visser?!).

Jezabel Vessir

Jezabel Vessir

Jezabel Vessir

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2016 NYC Zombie Crawl – 10.15.16

Another day another zombie crawl. I have been covering Doug Sakmann’s NYC and Brooklyn zombie crawls twice a year for nearly a decade and this year was no exception. I keep thinking all this is going to make for a good book that I can sell to nerds one day but I feel like by the time I ever do anything about it no one will care about zombies anymore… At least they keep making episodes of The Walking Dead…

This year the crawl started out at The Continental. I got there a bit late and they were already gone. I started walking towards Otto’s Shrunken Head (the first stop) and I ran into them about 6 blocks north of where they started. After a quick stop at Otto’s they crawled to Beauty Bar for the after party.

The after party featured music by J & The 9s and Skeletal Life, “undead burlesque” from Liberty Rose and some sideshow madness from Dr. Claw. Also a bunch of clowns showed up and some people from Troma including Will Keenan who played Tromeo in Tromeo and Juliet which if you haven’t seen it is maybe Troma’s best film and it was written (and maybe directed) by James Gunn who wrote Scooby Doo 2 (and also some other stuff Guardians of the Galaxy for example).

So go look at these photos if you feel like you need more zombie crawl photos in your life. These pics are kinda NSFW cause of the burlesque, the painful to look at sideshow stuff and one topless photo at the very end.

Click here to see all the photos from the 2016 NYC Zombie Crawl.

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

NYC Zombie Crawl

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April O’Neil For Wood Rocket

Part three of my collaboration with Wood Rocket was published over the weekend and it includes a ton of photos of April O’Neil. Everyone loves April so you should all be really happy about that. Just to recap: when I went on a west coast road trip this summer I shot five sets for Wood Rocket to help pay for the trip. I shot a sexy road trip web series with them called Road Strip a few years ago so we decided to continue with our on the road partnership. We started with Lily LaBeau and then Lucy Everleigh and now we reach the midway point with April!

These photos from April were all shot on the same day (well the same 24 hours at least) as we drove from LA to San Francisco. The first part of the set was shot along side of the Pacific Coast Highway. I actually thought we were going to have time to stop off at a few places like this but we kinda ran out of time. We did however find a really amazing cliff to shoot on. I actually don’t even remember where exactly it was except that it was somewhere between LA and San Louis Obispo. I know this because SLO is where we spent the first night of our two day road trip.

The legendary Madonna Inn is in San Louis Obispo and I was really excited when I found out it was on the way. We were actually just supposed to to LA to SF in one day until I realized that we could stop there. The place is insane and has tons of weird theme rooms and I really want to spend more time there. I kinda want to just live there actually. We got there pretty late so we didn’t get to explore much but the food was good and there was a hot tub and heated pool so not too mad. We got the Pioneer room which was pretty lame compared to some of the other crazy rooms but I guess that’s what you get when you book the cheapest room on Hotels.com. We did a quick shoot in the morning before we left and bought some souvenirs in the gift shop before heading to San Francisco.

The next day we took a bunch of random 35mm photos that I already posted but we didn’t shoot any proper digital photo sets or anything. We did manage to get locked out of my dominatrix friend’s dungeon that we were sleeping in. April is a wizard and she picked the lock and we actually got a few hours of sleep before we made our separate ways and I made my way up the coast.

I uploaded the public nudity photos to Driven By Boredom just so there would be content and of course they are on Girls of DBB too, but BOTH sets including the Madonna Inn stuff that has way more nudity are available completely for free on Wood Rocket so go look now!

April O'Neil

April O'Neil

April O'Neil

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2016 Kid Rock Fish Fry

I never thought I would ever shoot a music festival themed around Kid Rock but when Sailor Jerry asked me to come to Nashville for two days I wasn’t exactly going to say no. The hot chicken alone was reason to make the trip but I had no idea what I was getting into with the 2nd annual Kid Rock Fish Fry.

I should start by mentioning that there were no fried fish. I mean you could get a couple fish related items from the many food trucks but apparently the “Fish Fry” thing is some sort of inside joke or something. People kept asking me where the fish were. But, there were two people dressed as neon green guitar playing fish which was easily the best thing to happen to me all weekend. I mean how can you not love confusing fish mascots?

I also thought it was pretty interesting that the music lineup was the same for both days. I don’t think I have ever seen that at a festival before. Kid Rock played both nights and his set was exactly the same. He said “I have some good news and some bad news. Good news is that we have a badass set for you tonight. Bad news is that it’s the exact same show as last night.” His gave his reasoning behind this explaining “You never met a motherfucker quite like me.

I was there with Sailor Jerry and so I spent a lot of time in their “Norman’s Garage” set up. Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins is the tattoo legend the spiced rum is named after and they built a garage with two hair cutting stations and had a documentary about Sailor Jerry playing. You could come in and get your hair cut for free (I got my beard trimmed) and watch the documentary. I liked it because on Saturday it was hot as hell and the garage was a great break from the sun and then on Sunday it got suddenly unreasonably cold and it was a good excuse to hide out since I was wearing a t-shirt. They also had live painting from tattoo artist Mathew F. Scott and Daniel “Gravy” Thomas was there with the custom Sailor Jerry Ford truck that he brought on the Pawn Stars spinoff Counting Cars.  He and the truck got recognized several times which was kinda cool. I haven’t seen it yet but I kinda love those History Channel reality shows.

I took a TON of photos so this gallery is huge. I didn’t shoot much of the bands (although The Shrednecks were pretty good and have an amazing name) but I did shoot a million crowd shots. If you liked my juggalo photos you are probably gonna like these. They aren’t as crazy of course, but there are some wild mother fuckers in this gallery with some of the craziest outfits I’ve ever seen.  ICP and Kid Rock are both from Detroit and have made music together so it only makes sense that their fans would share some of the same sense of not giving any fucks.

So click here to see all the photos from the 2nd annual Kick Rock Fish Fry at the Fontanel just outside of Nashville, TN.

kid-rock-fish-fry-12

kid-rock-fish-fry-127

kid-rock-fish-fry-210

kid-rock-fish-fry-31

kid-rock-fish-fry-114

kid-rock-fish-fry-241

kid-rock-fish-fry-262

kid-rock-fish-fry-237

kid-rock-fish-fry-223

kid-rock-fish-fry-120

kid-rock-fish-fry-274

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