2023 Miami Art Week

Two weeks ago I went to Miami for Art Basel/ Miami Art Week and a Dolphins game on Monday Night Football and the entire thing was a disaster so let’s break that down, post a handful of pictures and then let’s never speak of it again. Honestly I wouldn’t normally post any of this but I didn’t spend a bunch of time and money on this trip and come back with zero content, so here we go. Enjoy.

There have been a bunch of times in my life where I have gone to Miami with no plans and ended up having a great time, coming back with a ton of great photos and ultimately making some money. It’s been so consistent in my life that when I saw that Basel was happening the same week as a Monday Night Football game I was ready to book the trip and then figure it out later. Problem is I didn’t exactly know my dates. Ideally I would show up Friday and leave Tuesday morning but I had a new client who didn’t know the details of their event yet and so I couldn’t book the trip quite yet. Meanwhile I had a meeting with a second possible client who seemed to want me for a several day event and the only details we needed to work out was how long I was going to work for how much money. That gig started on Thursday afternoon so I finally confirmed my other client for Friday so I booked the trip, Thursday to Tuesday and got a non refundable hotel pretty close to one of the jobs because I am an idiot.

Shortly after I booked the trip my first client, the one that had confirmed all the details pulled out. Fortunately they gave me a kill fee that still pretty much paid for the trip but it went from being a money making trip to a break even one real quick. As we got closer and closer to the week it became clear that the second client had just ghosted me. I have no idea why or what happened but suddenly I was in Miami for four days with no jobs and nothing planned. I also happened to be busy as hell with a trip to NC for my girlfriend’s birthday, the big Dolfans NYC event I was throwing and then a trip to DC to see my folks since I missed Thanksgiving. Suddenly the Miami trip was on top of me and I had nothing planned. 

A few days before I left I went into panic mode, sending emails to old clients, friends I hadn’t seen in years an a bunch of models in Miami. Figured if nothing else I could do some photo shoots. I managed to plan two shoots, but wouldn’t you believe it, they both flaked. There was a third model who was visiting that I was trying to work something out with but that never happened either. Perfect.

On Thursday my flight was super early so when I finally got to my hotel they didn’t have a room ready for me so I just sort of sat in the lobby for far too long. I had barely slept so I tried to take a nap and after failing at that I ordered some food and started texting some friends. I got invited to the job that I didn’t get hired for and to a nightclub and to a dinner way too far from my hotel room. It was great to see I had stuff to do, but I just didn’t want to do any of it, and I had a long week so I just stayed in and watched a terrible football game. 

The next day I had a bunch of things I wanted to do. The first one was my buddy Deeze’s party. He had released a toy and some clothes with a Web3 company called Goonz and they were throwing a party. I went down there and had a good time. I met a few people I knew just on the internet and met some new folks and took a few 35mm photos. It was a very chill couple of hours and I had no idea it was going to end up the highlight of the trip. From there I went over to the legendary dive bar Mac’s Club Deuce for a bit and hit the always fantastic Sandwicherie which I hadn’t been to in years. And that’s where the trip peaked. I got stuck in such bad traffic that I just sort of gave up and went back to my hotel and eventually took an Uber over to Wynwood. I figured I would check out the new Graffiti Museum but it was closing when I got there so I ran into my buddy Sean and walked around with him for a bit and then stopped by the job that I got the kill fee for. I have no idea why I went but they invited me and I figured I should try and say hi. I wasn’t there long before I went to the Fool’s Gold party which I was also only at briefly because I am old and tired. 

On Saturday I had a bunch of stuff to do, and I managed to do almost none of it. It was so god damn frustrating dealing with Miami traffic that is so much worse than it was even a couple of years ago. It is so much worse than LA which is everyone’s favorite traffic to complain about. The one thing I did do was go see my friend Noah who had a piece of art in a gallery not too far from my hotel. When I got there, there was a pop up custom Miami Dolphins t-shirt event where they had graffiti artists designing shirts for you which I thought was cool and they told me the wait was 30 minutes so I figured why not. I was gonna go see my buddy Buff Monster talk on a panel at the Museum of Graffiti at six but it was only 4 so I had plenty of time. Two hours later I was still waiting and the sunk cost fallacy had broken me and I wasn’t leaving without a t-shirt I will absolutely never wear. I tried to go back to Wynwood to meet up with Buff even if he was speaking but traffic broke me and looking for a parking spot was absolutely hell and after 45 minutes in the car I just completely gave up and went back to my hotel and for the second of my three nights in Miami I just hung out in my hotel room.

By this time Basel was pretty much over and I hadn’t taken a single photo with my digital camera. I wanted to give you guys content so I figured the easiest thing to do would just be to once again go back to Wynwood and just take some photos of the murals there. It’s not the first time I have done exactly that. I don’t know why anyone would give a fuck about these photos, but it’s something and you get to look at them. I also finally went to the Grafitti Museum which was cool but way too small. So many important artists barely got a mention if they did at all. Once I got enough stuff I drove up to Delray Beach where my Dolfans NYC co-founder lives and watched the 1pm football games until it was time to meet up with her at an ice skating rink where her beer league team had a game. I watched some bad hockey in a freezing rink in a t-shirt and then accidentally went on a toll road on the way back to her place which cost me $45 because car rental places love to rip you off. After having dinner with her and her family the two of us went to Target and bought $700 of toys for needy children with some of the money we raised for charity this season. That was so much fun and honestly that was the actual highlight of the trip. It was so rewarding seeing all those toys piled up in the back seat of Michelle’s car, knowing so many kids would have a better Christmas because of our little fan club.

The next day I just hung out at Michelle’s house and did some work and then it was time for me to watch one of the most disappointing football games I have ever witnessed, and I have been to some bad ones.  The night started out well because we delivered all the toys to the toy drive and the people who ran the toy drive rolled out the red carpet for us and showed us around and hooked us up with food and drinks and all that. They hooked us up with some incredible seats as well. It was a great VIP experience all the way up until the game started. The Dolphins had one injury after another and were barely keeping up with a team that is much worse than them. A guy behind me puked and when someone washed the vomit up, the vomit water rolled under my seat for the rest of the game. Eventually the Dolphins made some big plays and were up two touchdowns with about two minutes to go. They then managed to somehow lose the game in embarrassing, humiliating fashion. 

When I finally made it back to Brooklyn I realized I had left my iPad and ear buds on the plane and no one ever found them. Just an absolutely cursed trip, but wait, there’s more! I had this idea that would wait until I got my 35mm film developed from the trip to do this post. That’s why this post wasn’t up a week ago. I finally dropped off all my film and in absolutely incredible fashion I got six rolls back and it just happens that two of the three rolls with Miami stuff on it didn’t really come out. Turns out the auto focus on my point and shoot seems to have broken at some point and 75% of the photos on those two rolls were a blurry mess (including my 35mm juggalo boat photos from the other night).

TLDR: I went to Miami, made no money, had a miserable time and managed to lose and iPad and break a camera. But hey, I have a few mediocre photos for you. Merry Christmas, I should be back with a big update before the end of the year.

Click here to see some 35mm photos from my trip to Miami.

Click here to see some digital photos of street art in Wynwood. 

Miami Art Week

I Don't Know Who Any Of These People Are

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

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Ape Fest – 6.23.22

We have a lot to talk about today. Gonna try to make this post make sense for people who hate/don’t care about NFTs and for people who are deep in it, and that’s going to be tough to do, but before I do any of that and get to the photos, we need to talk about abortion. 

These photos would have been up yesterday but I didn’t think it made any sense to post party photos during an historically awful day in American history. We have become a much more progressive country in the 50 years since Roe v. Wade was decided and yet here we are being ruled by a hard right fundamentalist minority. Women should be able to make their on medical decisions and this won’t save lives, it will only kill the poorest women. If someone wants an abortion, they will get one. Well off people will just travel to blue states while the poorest most vulnerable women will be forced to risk their own life to terminate their pregnancy. It’s a fucking nightmare. I donated to two things yesterday and I invite you to do the same. The first is a fund that goes to 92 different organizations, just make sure that if you donate that your phone number is not saved with ActBlue because you do not want hundreds of fundraising texts. The second is Brigid Alliance which does direct action to help women get abortions. They get money to travel and even childcare to look after their kids while they are away. They have a perfect rating from Charity Navigator as well. If you are here for NFTs, I am donating 100% of the profits from this photo to Brigid

Now, moving on. Let’s talk about Bored Apes. 

I have very mixed opinions about the Bored Ape Yacht Club and it’s hard to write about this to an audience that has such a wide mix of knowledge/views about what BAYC even is, but I am going to try. Let’s start with the basics. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 NFTs that are made up of randomly generated traits, giving them different levels of rarity and value. They have become one of the most valuable, and definitely the most recognizable NFT collection, and they have birthed several other collections as well. Because of this popularity and massive value, BAYC has become a symbol for everything people hate about NFTs. They see rich crypto bros with stupid monkey jpgs as status symbols and they think the art sucks and they don’t get it and they write off all NFTs as garbage. And the thing is, they aren’t completely wrong. 

I also don’t blame BAYC for this. There are so many garbage NFT projects that have all followed behind BYAC trying to copy their model and have caused so many people to blow so much money chasing the next BYAC. It sucks and PFPs (profile pictures or picture for proof) have made web3 a joke. It’s such a bummer as an artist just trying to make a living with this exciting new technology and people bring up apes and just write the whole thing off. 

And yes, there are a lot of awful people who own Apes. The level of privilege to own a $100k jpg and not sell it is astronomical, but I know many people who have had their lives absolutely changed by these things. They bought them cheap and either sold them for life changing money, or held on to them for the rewards which have also been life changing.  I ran into someone who I knew 15 years ago and he was able to show his artwork in a gallery all because he was given tens of thousands of dollars of “Ape Coin” just for holding on to his ape. 

Okay, so now we need to talk about the claims of racism. There is a professional troll named Ryder Ripps trying to destroy BAYC. I know Ryder a little bit and I actually think he’s pretty interesting as far as an artist. He’s been ripping off NFT collections and changing them a little bit to have a conversation about ownership and copyright and to make some money and PR out of it. I guess you could say he’s the web3 Richard Prince and I am sure both his supporters and detractors would probably enjoy that comparison. He put together a video that went viral recently that was basically a Q Anon video for NFTs claiming that BAYC is a white supremacist organization. It’s really silly and BAYC did a good job of refuting it, and I am sure even Ryder knows it’s all nonsense, but a good troll never admits the troll. They’ve also sued Ryder which is exactly what he wanted and his RR BAYC collection has been skyrocketing in value. 

So no, BYAC is not a secret racist organization, but I do think there is something a little problematic with anthropomorphizing apes, especially when you have traits that are generally associated with black culture. When I first saw BYAC I almost minted one, just because of the Driven By Boredom association, but two things kept me away, the fact that I had just lost some of the first ETH I ever made on a 10k project, and because I thought the apes with grills thing was a little gross. I clearly regret this decision and while I still think Apes are a little corny, the community around them is very impressive and nearly everything Yuga Labs has done as a company has been impressive. 

Which finally brings me to Ape Fest. 

Ape Fest is a festival that takes place around NFT NYC. This is the second one and the first one since the line for Ape Fest 2021 went viral for having a bunch of white dudes making ape noises in line. This year they made the very smart decision to allow plus ones (which is how I got in) and there were a lot more women, and even some non-white people there. A revelation. Web3 clearly skews towards a certain demographic but there are a lot of people trying to fix that and NFT NYC did feel a lot less broy compared to last year. 

I went to Day 4 of the fest, which takes place at Pier 17, down in by the water in the financial district. They had a massive inflatable ape at the entrance and a pirate ship just hanging out with BAYC sails. The party itself was on the roof of a building but the massive amount of money they spent on the surrounding area was not unnoticed. 

The event was pretty impressive and well run and the acts were pretty impressive. There were a lot of real goofy motherfuckers around, but everyone was super nice. As much as I would like to make fun of it, I really did appreciate the invite from one of my NFT collectors who goes by Freecard. He’s a great dude and it was a real experience. 

The party started with an NFT themed rapper named Spottie WiFi. I honestly expected him to look like his Crypto Punk since that’s how I know him. I am not sure his music is for me, but I have been in Spaces and Discords with him and he seems like a good dude. It was very cool to see him perform on this huge stage in front of his people. 

After that Lil Wayne performed and as much as I used to love him, I am not sure that getting the rapper most associated with the MAGA movement is an ideal way to let people know that you aren’t a secret white supremacist group. I still like a ton of his music though so it was at least enjoyable. Towards the end of his set my hurt back started killing me so I sat down and then someone managed to drop an entire whiskey drink on my from above. So that was fun..

After that Snoop came out with Eminem and they debuted their new song which isn’t about NFTs, but features the Apes that they each own. It’s actually a pretty good song & video and the comments on it make me feel that most people don’t even know what BAYC is. Eminem didn’t perform but Snoop did. He mostly was just DJing but he rapped some too. He had a song about Ape Coin which was a little cringe, but otherwise it was pretty fun. I think I’ve seen Snoop 4 times now and you can’t go wrong with that. That being said, he did have a couple strippers on stage with him, and despite most of my friends being strippers or former strippers, I still think it’s kinda a bad look for BAYC when they are trying to let people know they aren’t just a bunch of pale dudes. 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly outside of the whole Handmaid’s Tale situation, is that I didn’t shoot this like it was an event. I didn’t have press access so I didn’t shoot any of the music except a couple wide shots. I didn’t bring my flash so once it got dark I didn’t really shoot. I really just took my camera out because I didn’t want to carry it on my back anymore. My spine is completely fucked so it’s much less painful to hold my camera than carry it on my back. I also was rocking a terrible plastic lens because it’s way lighter than my normal one. So yeah, there aren’t many photos. I took a few of people I met, and some photos of people taking photos because I am working on a phone themed zine. I took some photos of a limbo contest but it was pretty dark at that point and a few other shots randomly here and there. It’s not great coverage of the event, but it did give me a chance to write this 1600 word article about all this stuff.

So TL;DR, abortion should be a woman’s choice, NFTs aren’t all animal jpgs, BAYC is a little bit corny and a little bit problematic, but they have changed lives, have done a lot of great stuff and threw some amazing events. 

Now click here to see a couple dozen photos from Day 4 of Ape Fest 2022 at Pier 17.

Ps. Something is fucked up with my gallery system because my website is archaic, so until I fix it I am using a Flickr gallery like it’s 2007. 

Ape Fest 2022

Ape Fest 2022

Ape Fest 2022

Ape Fest 2022

Ape Fest 2022

Ape Fest 2022

I Swear Snoop & Eminem Are In This Photo

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New Project: Vacation Photos Album

More than a month ago I had this idea. I wanted to go to Vegas to photograph a few models there and I couldn’t really afford the trip. I remembered a few years ago I made this “What Happens in Vegas” photo album to pay for a trip to Vegas and I thought maybe I should do a second edition of it. And then I started thinking about other ideas and I ended up with the idea of doing a “Vacation Photos” photo album, but we will get to that in a second. I organized a good edit of photos, put it for sale in my Etsy store, and was getting ready to release it when my life fell apart. If you don’t want to be guilt tripped into buying stuff, feel free to skip a paragraph. 

First my website got hacked and I was dealing with that for weeks. People suggested I should do a GoFundMe to pay for fixing it, but I always want people to get more than they pay for, even when just trying to support my work, and so I figured this Vacation Album would be a perfect way to pay for my website fees, so the project was still a go, and maybe I could just go to AVN in January a few days early. I was all ready to post about this when my roommate died. Aside from the trauma and depression from all of that I currently don’t have a roommate and the place is nowhere near ready to show. All her stuff is still here. Long story short, is that for all the people who wanted to help out with my website being fucked, or help with my other horrible situation, this is your chance. This album is fairly expensive, but buying anything from my store right now (or signing up for Girls of DBB) would help a lot. 

Anyway, let’s talk about the “Vacation Photos” album. The album will be an actual old school photo album, one of the cheap corny looking ones that you would get at a 1 Hour Photo lab. I bought 10 of them already and they are a mix of different colors so each color will be super rare. Each album will contain 64 actual 4″x6″ prints of my 35mm road trip work. It will be a good mix of nudity and roadside attractions and landscapes. The idea is that you would put it on your coffee table and people would pick it up thinking it’s an actual photo album from a vacation, only it will have a bunch of porn stars getting naked in public in it. Each album will be hand titled and signed on the inside back cover. There will be a VERY limited number of these. The Vegas album ended up being an edition of only 15 and my plan is to do 10 of these unless I sell a bunch this week, but at $150 each I cannot imagine I am going to sell a ton. But they make one hell of an Xmas present. Oh, and they come with a free postcard!

Speaking of Christmas, my plan was to get these to people before Christmas and I am still going to try but it somewhat depends on my photo lab. I am going to finish the edit this weekend and send them to print Monday, so hopefully they will all go out on the 20th, but if not I will ship them on the 30th when I get back from seeing my family for the holidays.

Below I am going to post some examples of the type of photos you will see in this photo album, but keep in mind this isn’t the final edit. I would imagine most of these will make it in the album, but I haven’t made any decisions yet. There are a few more on Girls of DBB too. 

So click here to buy a copy of Vacation Photos.

And click here to see a gallery of examples of photos that will end up in my Vacation Photos album.

Kimberly Kane

Charlotte Stokely

Graceland

Dana DeArmond

April O'Neil

 

 

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Lucy Sparrow’s Delicatessen On 6th

At some point in my life I used to not be broke constantly and I used to back a ton of projects on Kickstarter. I backed mostly photo projects but occasionally I would check out the other art on the site and I found this woman named Lucy Sparrow who was trying to raise money to build an entire bodega (or whatever they call bodegas in the UK) out of felt stuffed animals that she sewed herself. It seemed completely insane and so I donated some money and got a stuffed can of tomato soup out of the deal. Since then, I have followed Lucy’s career and she has done a number of pop up art galleries including another one in NYC that I unfortunately misse

Yesterday her newest pop up gallery opened, Delicatessen on 6th, and entire store filled with every type of anthropomorphic food you could imagine. I had to go this time and I went down to Rockefeller Center to check it out. I actually pitched the show super last minute to Gothamist, but they were already covering it so I went down there without a camera, HOWEVER, once I got there I had an idea.

I just got the iPhone 11 Pro and its camera is a huge jump up from the camera on the iPhone 8 that I have had for the last couple of years. I tested it out a couple of days ago on my friend Michelle, but other than that I hadn’t really used the camera. I suddenly decided that this would be a fun excuse to play with it. I shot over 100 photos using just my phone and ended up with about 50 decent shots. I didn’t do any editing to them, so these are just what they looked like out of camera…. er, phone. The one thing I did was crop them all so they looked like all the other photos on my site which was by far the hardest part. I had to cut a lot of stuff out and some of the shots just didn’t work cropped, but when I was shooting I did plan for the crop so if I left them uncropped they wouldn’t have looked very good either. It was pretty annoying. 

Overall I was pretty happy with the quality, especially because the show was kinda poorly lit and the phone gave no fucks. I could have probably made them look better with some color balancing, but that doesn’t really sound like something I would do. People looked the worst on it, and you could really tell how high the ISO is in some of the shots with a lot of grain in the background, but what are you gonna do, it’s a damn phone. Still, I am not too worried about iPhones replacing real cameras quite yet (Just kidding, they already have. Why do you think I am so broke?)

Anyway, the show was great and I ended up with a couple of tiny shrimps (although they charged me for the regular sized shrimp!) If you are in NYC you can check it out until October 20th. As the name suggest it’s on 6th Ave, right next to the Tonight Show. Most of the art is super affordable as well so you can bring your family home some sort of stuffed meat and still have money to buy actual food.

Now click here to see all my iPhone photos from Lucy Sparrow’s Delicatessen on 6th!

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

Lucy Sparrow's Delicatessen On 6th

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Museum Of Trash – 6.20.19

A few weeks ago I got to go to one of the NY Department of Sanitation’s garages on the Upper East Side to take some photos for Gothamist. Photographing trash trucks or something would be honestly really interesting to me but what awaited me was something much cooler. A man named Nelson Molina started picking up trash in 1981 and bringing it back to the garage, cleaning it and refurbishing it. He continued this up until he retired in 2015 filling most of the second level of the garage with previously abandoned treasures. 

The “Treasures in the Trash” collection was recently turned into an art exhibit at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery and the NYDS is looking for a permanent home for the collection. The reason he could fill most of the second level is because the building is no longer structurally sound enough to park trucks and the NYDS is going to be moving out in the next 5 years.

I would talk more about the collection, but you should just read the Gothamist article and look at the pictures because it’s pretty hard to describe how cool the place was. I will say it was amazing to talk to Nelson because obsessive collecting is in my blood and I love this kind of thing. I dream about opening some sort of weird museum one day and I have traveled the country to check out things like the Abita Mystery House or the “Devil’s Rope” Museum and Nelson’s trash fits right into that part of my brain. This gig was the perfect intersection of two of my favorite assignments I did for the Village Voice with Pinky Guest years ago: We went on a Valentine’s Day tour of a sewage treatment plant, and we also got to go to Antiques Roadshow. (Full disclosure: Pinky and I both have Abita Mystery House tattoos.)

Anyway, go read the Gothamist article and click through their slideshow because it’s in higher resolution than mine and I want them to keep hiring me, but my gallery has some extra photos in it because I took way too many photos so you can check that out below too. 

Click here to see all my photos from the DSNY’s Treasures in The Trash Museum.

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

Museum Of Trash

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Same Old City Zine Release

This Sunday I am going to be part of Cultural Traffic NY at the Hester Street Fair. Cultural Traffic is an art fair that takes place in a bunch of cities including London, Miami and the LA fair that I was part of late last year. There are a bunch of great exhibitors and you can come out and get books and zines and art prints and all sorts of stuff. Dashwood Books, my favorite book store in NYC, will be there as will Richardson, my buddy Seth Olenick and a ton of other vendors. 

I will be selling a bunch of my books, zines and prints including some sold out stuff, rare items and special editions and random merch that I don’t sell in my online store like DBB shot glasses that are too expensive to be worth shipping. Oh, and there will be a postcard rack with a ton of postcards because I bought one as decoration in my living room so I had to fill it.  I will also of course sign anything you want.

Specially for the fair I re-released my NYC photo zine Same Old City. It’s probably my favorite zine and it’s one of my craziest. Tons of sex and violence and street photography and general mayhem. It’s been long sold out so it seemed like a good time to bring it back. The new zine has four extra pages (and 5 new photos because I swapped one out), a slightly new cover and is limited to justy 100 copies. You can order it online now, but if you grab it at the fair it will be $10 instead of $12.

Okay, that’s all I got for now. Just wanted to tell you guys about the artfair and the new (?) zine. Hope to see a bunch of you guys Sunday. Online orders will ship Monday. 

Same Old City

Cultural Traffic New York

 

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61 Photos I Don’t Hate Kickstarter

If you are a regular reader of this website you are probably aware that I have been organizing every single photo I have ever taken. It’s taken me so damn long to do it and part of that reason is that I hate everything I do and I just get depressed looking at photos that I have decided I hate for whatever reason. I have been working on a portfolio for months now and figuring out how to make a few dozen photos reflect my entire body of work is the most frustrating thing I have ever done. It’s easy to edit a million photos down to a few hundred that aren’t awful, but almost impossible to get that edit down to a few that I actually love.

While I was doing all that I had this idea to go through all my 35mm work, which is my personal work, and pull every single image that I don’t hate that isn’t in another book or zine. When I was done I had an edit of 61 images and I decided I could make a decent zine out of that stuff, but it was just another folder full of photos in my endless collection of bad ideas I have for books and zines and art shows.

But then I realized the Kickstarter Make 100 project was coming up again. Every January they encourage makers that have used their platform to do a one off, short run project just for the point of creativity. This is the third year they have done it, and I really loved the idea but in 2017 I was in the middle of my Instaxxx book and last year I just didn’t have anything ready to go, but this year I had the perfect thing.

So I am going to make a book of 35mm photos I don’t hate. It’s going to be from the edit of 61 photos (probably much closer to 30 photos) and there are only going to be 100 copies made. Every one of them will be signed and numbered and the book is going to be square which I think will be a fun format to play with. 

There is also a limited edition of 25 books that will come with a 7″x7″ print (5 prints, each signed/numbered out of an edition of 5). It will have a variant cover and will have some additional photos and come in a fancy envelope! 

I just thought this project would be really fun to do, and super easy to execute. Shipping out hundreds of huge books was a nightmare last time I did a Kickstarter, but doing 125 small books will be a lot of fun and really simple to deal with. But don’t worry, I got a much bigger project in the works. My juggalo book is still coming soon!

Lastly, I wanted to give a big thanks to my photographer buddy Steve Prue for helping me film my Kickstarter video. It’s truly terrible, but that’s because I am awful on camera and I gave up editing after 30 minutes and just added ridiculous wipes and absurd sound effects so that my terrible editing would just look like a joke. 

Now go help me fund this book project! Even donating $1 helps my project in Kickstarters algorithm so even if you are broke even a tiny bit helps a lot. Thanks a ton!

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Cultural Traffic LA Arts Fair

If you are reading this I am in Los Angeles. I am in town for a few reasons but the important one is that on the 18th, that’s this Sunday, I am going to be at the Cultural Traffic Art Fair at That That Gallery. I will be selling my new zine Fuck LA (you should buy it!!) as well as Instaxxx, a bunch of other zines and prints and stuff. I am pretty psyched for it. 

That That Gallery is located at 4405 W Jefferson Blvd in Los Angeles and goes from 11am until 8pm. It’s completely free and there should be a ton of amazing stuff for sale there. I am splitting the table with my friends at Wood Rocket and they will have a bunch of weird things for sale like enamel pins, adult coloring books and new posters from vintage porn classics like Debbie Does Dallas and The Devil In Miss Jones. There are a bunch of great exhibitors as well including my friends at Paperwork NYC and rad publishers like Kill Your Idols and Richardson.

I don’t really have much more to mention in this post, but since I might not update again until after Thanksgiving (Gonna try and get some new pictures up this week but no promises) I figured I would give you guys something to hold you off. I took some photos of one of my friends dressed like a topless pigeon for some reason. I am not sure what I just said makes complete sense so let me explain. My friend asked me if I would take photos of her topless wearing a pigeon mask walking around NYC. We went to Times Square but it was raining so we went to Applebee’s like midwestern tourists and then finally took some photos of her topless hanging out with weird people who dress like the Statue of Liberty for money. The photos are real silly but she was happy with them and now you can look at them if you subscribe to Girls of Driven By Boredom. If you don’t then you are out of luck. It’s like $25 a year so I don’t know what you are doing not signing up.

I am gonna go hang out with my girlfriend now because we are celebrating our 1 year anniversary today. That’s pretty adorable right? Maybe you guys could look at the photos we ever took. I posted them right before we started dating officially so that’s extra cute. Sorry.

Okay, that’s enough. Here’s a flyer. See you guys sooner or later. 

Cultural Traffic LA

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Fuck LA

I recently got invited to be part of the Cultural Traffic art fair on the 18th in LA and it seemed like the perfect excuse to get out to LA for the first time in over a year. It also just so happens that my girlfriend is going to be there right before the fair and today is our one year anniversary so the timing was perfect for me to actually see her this month. My brother lives in LA so my parents are gonna come out too and we are gonna spend Thanksgiving together outside of DC for the first time in my life I think. But the important thing (for the purposes of this post) is that I have some new stuff coming out and you should buy it.

The first thing I have coming out has nothing to do with the LA trip. Over a year ago I had a really dumb idea and the timing wasn’t quite right but I held on to this idea until it was finally ready. I just got a box of 35 copies of whatever this dumb idea is. I have already sold about a dozen of them without telling anyone what it is and I only need to sell about 5 or 6 more to break even so I feel like this dumb idea was worth it. Everyone I have shown it to seemed to really enjoy it so maybe you will too. If you order it before I announce what it is (on November 18th), you get a free copy of my new zine as well, plus I will ship it to you before I leave for LA and you will get it and the zine in your hands before anyone else.

Speaking of the zine, this whole post is about the 2nd edition of my zine Fuck LA

Fuck LA was a special edition zine that I only made 50 copies of for the LA Art Book Fair a few years ago. It sold out really quickly and was hand numbered and came with a print. I was pretty proud of the zine and when this new book fair came out it seemed like a great reason to republish the zine.

I figured I would maybe remove a few photos and add a few more, but when I looked at it again I realized that a bunch of the photos were reused in my zine NOT SAFE and there were some photos I didn’t love or ones I didn’t really feel like I wanted to republish. Even so, I left in some of the crazier shit that is way more graphic than any of the stuff I post on here. So let’s just say it is very not safe for work.

The new edition ended up being more than 50% new photos and I even added 4 pages. Fuck LA was my largest zine to begin with and now it’s 56 pages! I actually have to charge $12 for it instead of $10 because it’s so long. It has a ton of new work and I added some black and white spreads which weren’t in the original. It’s still all 35mm and it still has some of my favorite photos from all my trips to LA over the years. It’s got a bunch of nude stuff but it also has a bunch of just crazy fucked up LA stuff like the time I saw a bunch of people get arrested at gunpoint while I was eating at a diner. It’s a really fun zine and even people who own the first edition will enjoy the new one. It’s not signed or numbered and it doesn’t come with a print but there’s only 100 copies and I don’t plan on publishing it again. Plus if you pre-order the zine I will sign it anyway.

So if you order Fuck LA now I will sign it and ship it as soon as I get back from LA. If you order the mystery item you will get it and the signed zine BEFORE I leave for LA. Plus I will include some weird shit with it because I love you.

Click here to pre-order the mystery item and the zine.

And click here to pre-order Fuck LA by itself.

Fuck LA

 

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