Over the past I have no fucking clue how long I have been organizing every photo I have taken since I moved to NYC in 2006. The idea is to eventually have a big fucking folder of images with all the best stuff from the last 8 years and to have things organized so that I can pull images that I need. I also notice I have found a ton of stuff that didn’t stand out at the time, for example just today I found a photo of Adam Scott I took before I even knew who Adam Scott was.

Since I started this project I have done a great job of organizing my 35mm archives. I worked pretty much 10 hours a day on that for a couple weeks and got it done. The digital stuff is a lot harder to do because of the sheer volume of the images. On a slow month I might shoot 4000 photos but during an event like South By Southwest I might shoot twice that many in five days. Getting through stuff has been fun, but I can only do so much a day without going insane.

Just today I finished going through 2009 which is a pretty serious accomplishment because in early 2008 I had a shitty camera so could go through that stuff very quickly and by the end of 2010 I had started shooting a bit less nightlife. In 2009 however I was going out nearly every night and sometimes shooting two or three events a night. So despite having more than five years to go I think I am nearly halfway through my digital archives. The last couple years are pretty organized anyway…

So, in celebration of finishing 2009 I decided a Throwback Thursday post was in order. I have put up a pretty massive gallery (over 300 images!) from 2009 that includes a lot of my favorite shots from the year. It’s probably less than a third of the images I pulled, but it gives you a nice look at one of my best years photographically. It’s amazing to see how far I progressed. The early 2009 stuff is terrible while the late 2009 work is better than anything I am doing now. It’s inspired me to work harder when shooting nightlife and makes me miss how much fun I used to have.

In this gallery you will find mostly party photos although there is some random stuff thrown in including a few old school naked girls in bathroom photo shoots. There are a ton of photos from the party Playhouse at Cain that was a really great party both photographically and on a hot babes I made out with kinda level. Unfortunately they stopped paying me and still fucking owe me money. There are also a bunch of images in here of kinda celebrity stuff or blast from the past images that are noteworthy for whatever reason. They might not all be fantastic photographically but they are cool to look at.

I think the big winner of 2009 was Roxy Cottontail who through two parties that were some of the most fun times I had in ’09. Check out her birthday party that year and the Pepsi party with Diplo that she through that year. Both great events. Speaking of Diplo… I photographed him and Steve Aoki a weird amount of times in 2009. Ninjasonik comes up a lot too and I shot a couple of great shows by Monotonix and Spank Rock who both happened to play the best Siren Fest I ever went to. A lot of girls show up a bunch in 2009 Alex Magnetic, Jocelyn and Chloe are particularly muse-worthy. Since then Alex was my intern and Chloe is a super famous model so that all rules.

Honestly there is way too much in here to cover… tons from Webster Hall when Trash and Boys & Girls were both happening on the same night… a bunch of big events like SXSW, Sundance, AVN Awards… live bands… burlesque… zombie crawls… comedy… fashion… Driven By Boredom tattoos… the list goes on and on.

But lastly I will mention there are a lot of pictures of my good friend Ease DaMan who sadly died recently. I met him in 2009 and took so many photos of the guy that year. He was so fun and so photogenic, rarely had his shirt on and once I showed up to a  party and the cops had shut it down because a fight broke out and Ease fucking bit someone. We all miss you tons Ease. Rest in peace.

I have no idea how I am going to come up with selects since I love so many of these photos, so I am just gonna put some random shit below here. Just make sure you look at the full gallery… and yeah, these photos are significantly NSFW.

Click here to see a bunch of photo highlights from 2009!

Way back in 2012 I photographed Dana DeArmond at our friend Chris’ amazing apartment. The dude collects musical instruments and modern furniture and his place was perfect for a photo shoot. Dana is one of my favorite models ever so clearly we killed it. In fact we took such fantastic photos that I didn’t want to post them. I wanted to see them in print. The set really had a retro Penthouse vibe so I pitched them to Penthouse right away. They weren’t really interested so I just sat on them a while. A few months later I started working for Hustler Magazine.

This set of Dana was pretty much the first thing I pitched to Hustler but they wanted to accompany it with an interview and for some reason that didn’t happen for a while. Nearly two years after we took the photos the images were finally published with an interview in the June 2014 issue of Hustler and is probably came out the best of anything I have shot for them.

I have shot Dana before but this by far my favorite thing we have done together and it’s honestly one of my favorite shoots of all time. Because I love it so much, and because there are so many explicit shots I am doing a special 3 day discount on the Girls of Driven By Boredom App. First time users can sign up using the code “dana” for 20% off through Wednesday. You need to see the full set and since I don’t post “spread” shots on here, you need the app to see everything. Plus the images are in twice the resolution so clearly it’s worth checking out. The app works on all smart phones and even just on your web browser. So sign up!

Special thanks to Chris Nelson and Kimberly Kane for their help on the shoot and thanks to Dana for her patience in the two years that it took for these photos to see the light of day. Now go look at these NSFW photos, they are very worth your time!

Click here to see the gallery of naked photos of the amazing Dana DeArmond!

I have to leave you guys with something fun headed into the weekend. A few weeks ago when I went on my recent road trip I realized that the Creation Museum was just outside of Cincinnati. We were planning on sleeping in Cinci on the second night of our trip so it seemed like something I had to go see. For those not familiar the Creation Museum is the pseudo-science museum dedicated to propagating the ideas that Genesis should be taking literally, evolution is a myth, the earth is 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. They recently made the news when their founder Ken Ham debated Bill Nye the Science Guy.

The museum is the best place ever. It’s filled with terrifying animatronics, dinosaur statues and just tons of weird shit pretending to be science. There’s also a petting zoo and a zip line course! All of this would be really great if it weren’t completely designed to brainwash small children. Any adult with the most basic education can see that their “science” doesn’t add up, but kids are told that museums are educational and they get to go to their favorite petting zoo and then suddenly they are an adult that believes that the Grand Canyon was created in the great flood.

Honestly it’s a great experience and everyone is really nice and you can be blown away by ignorance while at the same time riding a llama. Oh, and there is a fantastic gift shop where you can buy DVDs about the homosexual war and poorly written leaflets on how to convert non believers.

Before I leave you with pictures here are a few facts I learned at the Creation Museum:

• Dinosaurs are dragons.
• Animals got distributed around the earth after the flood by riding trees across the ocean.
• Penguins hung out in the Garden of Eden.
• Incest is morally relative.
• Noah took baby dinosaurs on the ark so they would fit.
• Zorces are adorable.

Clearly you need to get to Petersburg, Kentucky at once to see this majestic monument to mythical madness. You will have a blast no matter what thing you believe in!

Now click here to see all the photos from the Creation Museum!

The other day I was crawling through my photo archives as I have been doing semi constantly for the last few months and I was thinking about how much fun I used to have shooting nightlife. Right then I got a text from Prince Terrence and he offered me a job shooting his Wednesday night party on the rooftop of the new McCarren Hotel in Williamsburg. Normally the money wouldn’t have been enough to get me to leave the house, but I was feeling like I needed to start enjoying fun again so I took him up on the offer.

I headed to Sheltering Sky last night and pretty much immediately felt the dread of having to shoot party photos. I sort of meandered about taking a few shots here and there, but at some point one of the hosts put a Red Bull in my hand, I chugged it and got to work. By the end of the night I was having a blast and was bummed that the party only went to 2am.

At some point in the night Terry gave me a pretty inspiring lecture about how New York’s party scene sucks right now because we let it suck. It’s up to all the people throwing parties when things were fun to start doing it again. I sort of figured parties sucked recently because I got old and didn’t know what was going on, but Terry is out there every night still and he assured me parties are mediocre everywhere and we need to do a better job of making shit fun again. I am on my fourth cup of coffee right now and I think he has a point. Maybe I do want to start going out again and grinding like I give a shit, at least for a couple more years before I officially become the creepy old dude.

Anyway, the party ended up being a lot of fun and I met a bunch of cute girls and hung out with a bunch of cute girls I have known for ages too. I ran in to Amy Rose who is pretty much the most fun human ever who just sold a book and was out to celebrate with a friend who just sold a TV show. I saw one of my favorite people Olivia who I pretty much spent all summer last year hanging out with who is well on her way to becoming a super famous movie star and  fortunately for you guys I ran into the museworthy Lena Marquise who said goodbye to me by pulling up her skirt for a photo before walking out the door. So yeah, this gallery is NSFW.

But yeah, maybe I will be doing more party photos soon. I kinda miss it. At the very least I am sure I will be back at Sheltering Sky before long. I hope to see you guys out!

Now click here to see all the photos from Sheltering Sky at the McCarren Hotel in Williamsburg. 

Hi guys, this is Alex. She is a total babe. I met her a couple years ago through a mutual babe friend. We quickly decided we should do a photo shoot at Coney Island but then it didn’t happen that summer, or the next summer… most people would have given up, but when it comes to photographing cute ladies I am relentless and it finally paid off!

Several weeks ago Alex finally had some free time and we took the train down to Coney Island. I had some expired film that I wanted to experiment so we took a few photos on the train. They didn’t come out very well but I included two of them in this set. I then put a roll of black and white film in my SLR camera and had new color film in my point and shoot. I ended up shooting three or four rolls of color, a full roll of black and white and the end of the expired roll. In all I ended up with a nice gallery of 35mm photos of Alex that I think you are going to dig.

As soon as we got off the train we went directly to Nathan’s Famous because a trip to Coney Island without a Nathan’s hot dog is sacrilegious. From there we hit the beach and it was pretty funny to see Alex in her bikini walking around with me wearing all black and boots on the sand. Some teenage boys wanted to know if she was a famous model and if they could take pictures with her.

From there we clearly hit some rides… first the Cyclone because it’s the best roller coster in the world. It’s completely terrifying and at least three people have died on it in my lifetime. Our best photo opportunity came on the Wonder Wheel and we shot a few topless shots on there which makes it the fourth ferris wheel in one calendar year that I photographed someone topless on – Navy Pier in Chicago, City Museum in St. Louis and Santa Monica Pier in CA round out the list.

After that we grabbed some funnel cake and some absurd drinks, got Alex topless on the boardwalk and finally headed home. It was a really day and I got some nice photos of an awesome babe that I have been trying to photograph for ages. Hopefully another two years won’t go by before I get to photograph her again. Thanks for the adventure Alex!

Now click here to see the full gallery of 35mm images of Alex at Coney Island!

Ps. These photos are available in high resolution on the Girls of Driven By Boredom app!

It’s not Flashback Friday or Throwback Thursday or whatever bullshit alliteration thing that exists on the internets. I am however going to take you guys back in time to February 2008 with some very cool, but very terrible photos from the last two shows of the underground comedy show Invite Them Up. I had an awful early digital camera at the time, but I think these are worth looking at anyway.

I had been living in NYC for about a year and a half and I was shooting party photos every day and all that shit, but I also was going to underground comedy shows a couple nights a week. For some reason I rarely took photos at these events but there are a couple of exceptions.

In late February the legendary Invite Them Upended. Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale had been hosting it for five years and for the last year I was a constant regular. The show was at the Rififi nightclub (the original home of the party Trash) and Rififi was going to be closing and Invite Them Up decided to get ahead of that and end early. (Brett Gelman and Jon Daly took over Wednesday nights until they escaped to LA.)

To end the run Invite Them Up held three farewell shows so they could invite all their favorite comics to play. And the line up was impressive at the time, but even more so looking back on it. It’s amazing how many people have gone on to huge things. John Oliver, Dimitri Martin, Jon Benjamin, Pete Holmes, Brett Gelman and Seth Herzog all have had their own TV shows since then. Mike Birbiglia turned his hit one man show into a fantastic movie. Zach Galifinakis was a big name at the time but I don’t think anyone would have predicted his post Hangover fame. Todd Barry played all three and did one of best comedy sets I have ever seen just making fun of Rififi off the top of his head. He also played drums with Yo La Tengo. Chelsea Peretti and Kristen Schaal are two of the funniest women on TV and Leo Alan and Jon Glaser seem to be on everything that exists on Comedy Central. Oh yeah and Jim Gaffigan and Michael Showalter performed too… you may have heard of them. Seriously when I found the flyers to these shows in a box recently I couldn’t believe how good the line up was.

Also, just in the crowd shots after the show there are pictures of Reggie Watts, Kumail Nanjiani (probably a year before I actually met him), Jon Daly, Larry Murphy and a bunch of other hilarious humans. And I only photographed two of the days!

At the end of the third show, Eugene and Bobby brought up a time capsule that everyone could put stuff in to be opened five years later in 2013. I wonder if they ever opened it because I am pretty sure that Jon Benjamin put a vile of his urine in it. I don’t even remember what I put in it. Whatever the case I think these photos serve as a pretty good time capsule of the last nights of a legendary comedy show that will never happen again.

Now click here to see photos from the last two Invite Them Up comedy shows in February 2008!

I don’t remember when it was that I shot these photos exactly but I do remember that the night before I shot an incredibly fancy event in LA honoring Oliver Stone. I had to wear a suit and it was pretty much as corporate of a gig as I do. A few hours later I was in a car driving to Las Vegas to shoot a bunch of strippers for Hustler Magazine. That’s sort of a perfect summation of my professional life.

There’s not really much to say about these photos except the are semi documentary but mostly posed photos of Hustler Club dancers and some of the other club employees. The club was actually open when we took these so the ones at the bar and in the club were taken with customers watching. We also took some photos outside and it was pretty freezing… not like actually freezing but freezing for Las Vegas and I am pretty sure the girls wanted to kill me.

I don’t go to strip clubs but I do have a lot of dancer friends (several that work/ have worked at this exact club) and I really want to do some sort of documentary photo project on dancers that sort of compares different aspects of the industry from feature dancers to amateurs and everything in between. I feel like the whole thing is pretty interesting so it was cool to get a shot to do a little bit of that even if most of this stuff was posed.

Anyway, there are a bunch of pictures in this gallery and 99% of them are NSFW so enjoy that!

Now click here to see all of the outtakes from my Girls of Hustler Club Vegas shoot for Hustler Magazine.

Ps. Pick up the May 2014 issue of Hustler to see the final product of this shoot. And high resolution photos from this shoot are available on the Girls of DBB app.

In my last post about the Antiques Roadshow I talked about how I asked my friend Pinky to come with me and write about the adventure. The reason I thought of Pinky first was because last month we went on a five day road trip because she wanted to hit up flea markets and thrift stores before ending up in Scottsboro, Alabama the home of the Unclaimed Baggage Center. She loves that kinda stuff and I love road trips so I was totally down as long as I got to finally visit South of the Border and hit a few other weird spots along the way because while Pinky’s passion is digging through old junk for treasures, mine is insane Americana and roadside attractions!

Our first stop was Pittsburgh because it’s about 6 hours from NYC and we knew we could get there between the time Pinky got off work and the time where we fell asleep at the wheel. I drove us directly to Primanti Bros sandwiches for a terrifying 2am sandwich with french fries and coleslaw IN the sandwich. The next morning we got up and headed to Braddock, PA just outside of Pittsburgh to visit one of my child hood best friends at the farm he manages. We hit a few thrift stores in the area and then booked it to a weird casino in southern Indiana.

The next morning after a mediocre casino breakfast buffet we drove to the Creation Museum. It’s Ken Ham’s massive museum dedicated to using pseudoscience to attempt to disprove the theory of evolution. It’s not really effective to a rational adult but it probably is to the scores of little kids who are being indoctrinated in insanity every day. I mean they have dinosaurs and a petting zoo. Don’t worry, I took a ton of digital photos and will do a whole post about it soon. I assure you I will come back to this madness.

After the museum we drove quickly south in time to hit Louisville for some thrifting and dinner at “Game” a restaurant that serves kangaroo and other unusual meats. My kangaroo burger was pretty good but the elk slider was fucking incredible. It beat out the wild boar one by a mile. Sadly we didn’t have time to stick around Louisville and we kept driving until we reached Bowling Green, KY.

Bowling Green is home of the Corvette Museum which is impressively big and full of some pretty cool cars, but our agenda was not to see sports cars… we were there for the sinkhole! In February a giant hole opened up under the Corvette Museum taking a bunch of cars down into an underground cave below. The sinkhole became part of the museum but they are working to repair it so I wanted to see it before they filled in the hole for good. It was well worth the discounted admission (thanks AAA!) to see the massive hole, although it didn’t photograph particularly well. The cars were cool too.

From there we headed directly to Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville where we ordered quickly but waited over an hour for our chicken and unbelievably it was worth it. Pinky lived in Nashville for a year and talked a big game about the chicken but it was some of the best non Popeyes fried chicken I have ever had in my life. I wish I got medium instead of mild but stories about burning assholes scared me away. I would have probably ordered another whole meal but we had to make it to Scottsboro!

About an hour before closing we finally made it to the turnaround part of our journey: The Unclaimed Baggage Center. Pinky had wanted to go to the Center for years. They buy tons of lost luggage from airports and sell everything at the massive store. Considering we had driven for days to get there it was pretty disappointing honestly. It was pretty much just an expensive thrift store. There was no digging or crazy deals to be had. It would probably be super useful if you lived in the area to get barely used stuff at a discount but no treasures would be found sadly. The town of Scottsboro had some other promising thrift stores and rival unclaimed baggage stores but we unfortunately got there too late to hit any other spots before closing. Clearly a return trip is in order.

From there we headed north, stopping in Atlanta for a disgustingly good Elvis themed peanut butter, bacon and banana burger and then ran across the street to the bar where Steph from the Coathangers works. She owed me a copy of their newish record and I also am mildly in love with everyone in their band so it seemed like only thing to do while in their hometown. For some reason I didn’t take any photos while in Atlanta but I swear it happened.  After hitting five states in one day we ended up in the middle of nowhere South Carolina because we needed to get some sleep. My primary goal of the trip was coming up and I had to be well rested.

Somehow I have never been to South of the Border. Despite living on the east coast and traveling by car all over it, I never took I-95 from North to South Carolina. One of the largest roadside attractions in the country, South of the Border is a massive, completely offensive complex of gift shops and terrible food. There is a mediocre amusement park, mini golf course and even a reptile zoo. It was god damn incredible. Most of the photos in the gallery are of South of the Border because it’s god damn photogenic. Aside from the racist logo and terrible food I could probably just live there. It’s magical.

From there it was just a few thrift stores and flea markets and a quick stop for dinner in my old hometown of Richmond, VA before we hit my parents place in DC. They were asleep when we got there but I got to play with my parents dog which was incredibly important and then after a few hours sleep finally ran the final leg up to NYC pretty much without stopping. The end.

Now finally, click here to see the 35mm snapshots I took on our random road trip!

This is going to be a pretty great update. I mean assuming you love Antiques Roadshow as much is I do which is probably unlikely unless you are a 65 year old woman from middle America. I am pretty much obsessed with Antiques Roadshow in a completely non ironic way. It’s sort of the perfect TV show combining great stories, educational information and a wide variety of subjects all with an emotional payoff at the end of each segment when they find out what their items are worth. As someone full of cynicism and hate I love watching people incredibly passionate and in love with stuff I never even considered interesting before. It’s led me to find beauty in things like stone pottery and Federalist furniture. I have watched probably hundreds of episodes.

The Antiques Roadshow finally came to NYC last Saturday for the first time in many years. I tried to win their free ticket lottery but had no luck. I tried to buy a ticket online but they were over $100. I decided to reach out to a friend I met at jury duty who works PBS and amazingly he got me a pair of tickets. My friend Pinky Guest is pretty obsessed with thrift stores and flea markets so I decided to bring her along. I was pumped.

What I failed to mention is that at the same time I was frantically trying to find a ticket I was also pitching the story to my editor at the Village Voice. He liked the idea but was out of town and didn’t try to request a press pass until two days before the show. I already had tickets at that point and I had given up hope of covering it as a journalist, but on Friday afternoon the confirmation came through and I was approved!

I didn’t know what to do about Pinky though, I felt bad just abandoning her there so I had an idea. She writes copy for advertising and has worked professionally as a blogger in the past and she also runs Ebay Shop Of Horrors so I pitched both her and my editor on the idea of her writing a story to go with my pictures. They were both on board and we set out on the greatest three hour adventure of our lives!

When we got to the Roadshow we were introduced to our media escort who would take us around the event since there are a lot of rules in place to protect the privacy of people who have won big money items on the show. For example we could only publish first names of the attendees we interviewed. Our escort also let us cut the line to have our items appraised!

We each were able to bring two items to be appraised by a Roadshow expert. Pinky brought two pieces of her mom’s old jewelry and I brought a terrifying unicorn taxidermy (that Pinky found while searching for Ebay Shop Of Horrors items) and a belt buckle that I bought at a flea market for $5.

Our first stop was to the jewelry appraisers who told Pinky that her first item was worth a couple hundred dollars but could be worth more if she could find a photo of her mom wearing it at Studio 54, a frequent haunt of her mothers back in the day. Pinky was a bit disappointed with that but was excited to learn that the biggest stone in her second item, a bracelet, was a yellow sapphire and not citrine as she believed. It ended up being worth as much as $2000!

I took both my items to a bestashed gentleman at the “Collectables” table. He seemed very excited about both my items and told me that my unicorn was probably made as a souvenir in the 60s in China and might actually be made of dog hair! He told me it was worth $250 which annoyed the hell out of Pinky since she told me about it and I won the ebay auction for $35. “How could your unicorn be worth more than my necklace!?” My belt buckle seemed to be the real prize though and my appraiser seemed to be in love with it. It’s a folk art buckle with an Easy Rider style chopper on the front with an engraving from a father to his son on the back. I found out it was actually made of silver and he showed it to another appraiser before telling me it was worth $75. I was sort of surprised at how low the appraisal was given his level of excitement but considering I paid $5 for it I still left a big winner.

After our appraisals we wondered around the convention center talking to people about their items. Pinky interviewed about 25 people while I took pictures. We met a guy who paid $50 for a rifle stock that he found out was worth $10,000 and a couple who live in artist Red Grooms’ former loft and their collection of his art was worth $15,000. We also got to interview the dreamy Roadshow host Mark L. Walberg and talk to one of my favorite appraisers about antique fire arms! It was pretty fantastic. After that Pinky and I watched the 100 Foot Journey proving that we are little old ladies trapped in 30 year old hipster bodies.

Pinky wrote a fantastic article about our trip for the Village Voice that I am pretty proud of… you should click here to read it right now.

After you look at that, take a look at a rough draft of Driven By Boredom’s new photo gallery system. There is a new Driven By Boredom update coming sooner or later but we had to rush things a bit because I broke my old galleries accidentally. They will still exist as they are now, but moving forward we are going to be using WordPress’ internal gallery system. There will be a new design to it, but for now it’s a little clunky. It’s better than the old galleries, but it will get a lot better soonish.

Now click here to see all my photos from the Antiques Roadshow at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC!