At the 2025 Gathering of the Juggalos I did nearly an hour long interview with Andrew Callaghan, the journalist behind the YouTube channels All Gas No Brakes and Channel 5. They needed a “juggalo expert” to answer some basic questions and give them an overview they could use to piece their Gathering of the Juggalos video. I am always wary about people coming to the Gathering to make videos making fun of juggalos, but I am a fan of Andrew’s work and know he treats his subjects with respect (sometimes too much respect).
I knew the video would be good, but I was still scared that my interview would get cut up and used out of context in a way that would make me look bad, so waiting for it for the last 15 months has been a bit nerve wracking. Well, turns out I didn’t need to worry. Yes I am wearing tan pants for the first time in my life and yes I have lost 25 lbs since then, but I think everything came out well. There were a couple things that were a bit out of context, like it sounds like I bring up the Chicano LA punk scene for no reason, but I totally understand the editing choices and it’s absolutely fair.
I think this video does a much better job of explaining the festival than the documentary American Juggalo which I enjoyed but felt a bit exploitive because they only focused on the weirdest people. It’s hard not to focus on the craziness but the Channel 5 video does a better job showing both the buttholes and the people behind those buttholes.
At the very end of the festival I was walking around with Sidam and two of the Channel 5 guys and I saw my friend Chris aka Mankini. He’s well known juggalo because he spends nearly every festival walking around in a string bikini, but he also happens to be just a really great dude who I look forward to seeing every year. I basically begged Sidam to interview Chris because I knew he was going to be good and I was right.
In the light of the stage, standing in a Faygo soaked mud pit, Chris delivered my favorite moment of the entire video:
People are afraid of what they don’t understand. So, it’s really hard to understand all of this when you’re just looking at it from the outside. You see a bunch of people with painted faces spraying soda on each other. But in reality, you’re looking at the last free place in America. Here you can be whoever you want to be, and it’s not going to matter to anybody. No one’s going to judge you. No one’s going to hate you. No one’s going to dislike you. You’re welcome here. Everybody is welcome here no matter what. I know juggalos who are lawyers. I know juggalos who are doctors. I know juggalos who are dentists. I work in biotech. My company handles cancer research. So again, we go back to that misconception of juggalos. But really, tons of us have crazy jobs that you’d be like ‘that doesn’t make sense’. But really, it does cuz we really are just normal people that like to come here and have fun and enjoy ourselves and just be ourselves.
It was the perfect way to end the video and explains the Gathering better than I have in 15+ years of documenting it. So shout out Andrew and his crew for putting together a great video that I am glad I could have helped out a bit with. I have stayed in touch with him so you never know, I might end up in another one of these videos one day. In the meantime, check out the video, it’s absolutely worth your time. Plus you get to see me wearing tan pants throughout the video. Whoop whoop.