Turns out I have come down with some sort of plague from the Gathering, I tested negative for covid so it’s most likely Clownitis. I am trying my best to get all these photos edited and up, plus I gotta unpack and then repack cause I am going on vacation on Wednesday. Not sure if I can get it all done while I am feeling like hot garbage, but I am trying.
Speaking of hot garbage, the first thing I photographed on day 2 of the 25th annual Gathering of the Juggalos was the Faygo Wet T-Shirt Contest. To be clear, the hot garbage thing was a joke, you know I love my juggalos deeply and I had a couple of friends enter the contest and quickly became friends with a bunch of the babes hosing the juggalettes down. The Gathering is great place to meet hot naked people to photograph, but also no one wants to shoot at the Gathering so, hopefully I will run into some of them one day.
I shot a million photos of the wet t-shirt contest but I can’t post most of the publically, luckily I have my site Girls of Driven By Boredom which has the full gallery of wet t-shirt contest photos uploaded to it already. Might be worth signing up for because there will be more juggalette content where that came from.
Anyway the contest was chaotic as always. I honestly kinda hate shooting them cause I feel like kinda a creeper and it’s sort of the same thing every year, but it’s such good content I have to. I can’t tell you how many people email me about NSFW juggalette content over anything else I shoot. It’s wild. But yeah, as someone who is a professional naked person documenter, it feels weird to be part of a thraul of people just trying to take photos they can get off to at home. I mean, no shade, but that’s just not what I am about.
Remember that time two sentences ago when I said it was always the same thing every year? Well not this year. This year the contest was won by an elderly woman who had the entire crowd chanting “Grandma! Grandma!” Turns out she is an OnlyFans model named Linda Hope. What an absolute legend. Seeing her win really warms your cockles.
I guess day two was just a NSFW day, and a day of me going back on things I just said. Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said no one wants to shoot at the Gathering? Well it turns out I did do a NSFW photo shoot. I photographed a juggalette last year named Lil Filth (the set is up on Girls of DBB) well this year I went up in the hills with her and her friend to take some photos and it turns out we were standing in poison ivy but they were wearing tall shoes so I think everyone was okay. That shoot will be coming sooner or later, but I did post a few previews in this gallery.
Man, we are 500 words into this thing and we haven’t even got into the music and the rest of the day. I only photographed three musicians on day two, ¡Mayday!, Waka Flocka Flame and of course the Insane Clown Posse. I have photographed ¡Mayday! before and they aren’t my thing but people seem to dig them a lot, but I honestly can say that about most of the musicians at most festivals so that’s no slight to them.
Waka Flocka I have now photographed four times, three times at the Gathering and once at the AVN Awards. Everytime he put on a show and I appreciate the hell out of that shit. This year I ran into him getting his face painted (huge shout out to the juggalette who pointed it out) which made for some fun photos. His set was insane and when he jumped in the crowd I immediately jumped in after him. I covered his 2015 set for Vice after I jumped into the crowd with him so of course I had to do it again. But turns out 35 year old me and 45 year old me are not the same. I got straight fucked up in the pit. I still got some great shots, but I am getting too old for this shit. It was still a blast.
After that ICP performed their first of two sets at the Gathering. I have photographed them so many times, and honestly I alway suck at it. These days I try to stay out of the Faygo rain and just make sure I get a couple decent shots and get out of there before I get too soaked. Didn’t really work out for me this year and my lens got blasted. Between my sticky camera and getting beat up in the pit I decided to call it an early night. I think I was back to my hotel by midnight.
The only other thing I should mention about day two is that you might recognize Sidam, the ski masked from the YouTube show Channel 5. If you follow me on Instagram you might know I had a recent bone to pick with Channel 5 for using one of my juggalo photos without permission, well let’s just say we had a conversation about that, but I will keep you in suspense until I post the Day 3 photos…
Now go check out all the safe for work photos from day two of the 25th annual Gathering of the Juggalos.
