In 2010 Saturday Night Live released a video mocking the Insane Clown Posse’s song Miracles. The line “fucking magnets, how do they work?” had already gone viral and the SNL video just added fuel to the fire. Everyone on the internet was dunking on ICP and juggalos. The problem with all that is that if you are at all familiar with their music you would realize that ICP was in on the joke and I just so happened to be familiar with their music.
When I was 17 Insane Clown Posse released an album called “The Great Milenko”. It’s possible that you would have never even heard of the band if a bunch of conservatives hadn’t lost their damn mind and started protesting the record. Hollywood Records, and imprint owned by Disney, dropped the band. MTV News picked up the story and a bunch of disaffected teenage kids picked up the album…
The subculture of juggalos didn’t really exist back then and so it didn’t seem that out of character for a bunch of DC punk kids who loved b-horror movies to take a chance on the band when their albums were essentially musical b-horror movies. The music might not have been great but the songs were funny and fucked up and people had been telling us forever that our music was terrible, so it’s not like we gave a single fuck what people thought about that.
By the time I went to college in 1999 I had pretty much stopped listening to ICP. They had a new album out that year and it wasn’t really for me and I wasn’t hanging out with my high school punk friends on the daily. I didn’t really think about them again until the Miracles video dropped. But when it did, I found myself defending them constantly. I don’t know how many times I had to explain to someone that they were trying to be funny. They thought the famous “magnets” line was funny too.
At some point I almost jokingly Tweeted “Who wants to go to the Gathering of The Juggalos with me?” My editor at the Village Voice, Camille Dodero was the only person who responded. She started working at the Voice wanting to write, but she had been stuck editing other people’s work and she thought this would be the perfect story for her. The Voice only wanted to send a photographer but she wanted to go so she paid for her trip out of her own pocket. By the time we returned from the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos my photos had already blown up, her story had become a cover story, and she definitely got reimbursed for her expenses.
From then on juggalos were my beat. I returned to the Gathering every year and ended up covering juggalos for dozens of outlets, from Rolling Stone and Vice and the Daily Beast, to countless alt weeklies and music magazines to even Playboy and Hustler. Last year I was even interviewed by All Gas No Breaks/Channel 5 as their “juggalo expert” for a video that tragically still hasn’t dropped yet.
Over the years (amazingly partially thanks to my coverage) juggalos have become less of a punchline. The Gathering of the Juggalos has become less terrifying and far more accessible. The festival has publicists and wifi and dozens of social media influencers who show up to make fun of juggalos only to leave loving these insane clowns. The problem for me is that I am a victim of my own success and people are sort of over it. The collapse of media hasn’t helped, but my clients have ben dropping one by one. Last year I only had two clients and one of them was Brooklyn Vegan who just laid off most of their staff.
That’s all to say that The Gathering of the Juggalos is happening right now and for the first time since 2009, I am not there. I was going to lose money on the trip and it was the best time for me to visit my family and see my niece and nephew and I made the hard decision not to attend. I hope to get back next year because I am having crazy FOMO and I miss my clowns. I have been working on a Gathering of the Juggalos book for years that still doesn’t exist and until it does I can’t retire… just take a little break.
Now, did I think this post was going to be 1000 words long? No, probably not, but I started and I couldn’t stop and here we are at the main point on this post, which is to say, don’t worry, I still have some NSFW juggalettes for you which is honestly half the reason people love my photos in the first place. I have not one, but two juggalette galleries for you that I have already posted to my paysite Girls of Driven By Boredom (which has so much juggalette content if you are interested).
The first shoot I actually did on the ground last year at the Gathering. I shot my pal Lil Filth and her friend Quaesita on a poison ivy covered hill that people were camping on for some insane reason. I actually never asked them if they got poison ivy, I hope not but sometimes you have make sacrifices for art.
The second shoot is of Malibu Montana aka Tat2Barbie who I met at the Gathering of the Juggalos years ago. I have some insane photos of her over the years but we had never done a proper shoot. I followed her on Instagram at some point and while I was in Vegas in January for the AVN Awards and noticed she was also in Vegas. I hit her up and she came by and we attempted to shoot some photos in the “kitchen” of my hotel room. The lighting was so bad I actually turned off all the lights and used this cheap video light I have to light her and those ended up being pretty cool. I feel like we could have done better, and hopefully we will one day, but like if juggalette strippers with face tattoos are your cup of tea I have a feeling you are gonna love these photos.
So now that we are over that 1000 word count I mentioned earlier let’s get to the photo gallery. I have just hand full of mostly safe for work images below from both shoots, but you can see everything over on Girls of DBB, so go there now and I will be back soon, I swear.
Click here to see all the NSFW photos of juggalettes over on Girls of Driven By Boredom!
