At 3am on Saturday I got on a train headed for DC. My band had just played and I was wired from the horrifying 5 hour energy and rum cocktail I down 20 minutes before I play a show. I didn’t sleep a wink on the train. It was 7am when I arrived. I ended up getting about 90 minutes of sleep before heading down to the Lincoln Memorial for Juggalo March on Washington.

I have been photographing juggalos since 2010 and in that time I have grown very protective of them. Juggalos are the most mocked subculture on the planet but if you spend a day with a bunch of juggalos you will come away with a completely different opinion of them. They are the nicest, most accepting, down to earth people you could possibly meet and every journalist I have met covering juggalos comes away with the exact same feeling.

So in 2011 when the FBI classified juggalos as a gang I was mystified. It made no fucking sense to me. Yeah of course some juggalos commit crimes but so do fans of every genre of music. The Insane Clown Posse is a horror movie in music form. Should we be locking up the millions of people who watched IT last weekend?

At the Gathering of the Juggalos in 2012 ICP held a talk to discuss the FBI designation. They had their lawyer come out and talk as well. They then set up an area of the festival where people could come and tell their stories about how this bullshit designation had fucked up their lives. Here’s how I covered it at the time.

Eventually the ACLU got involved and it seemed like this was such an easy to fix mistake but the mistake was never fixed. ICP had their lawsuit thrown out two times and even though they won an appeal in 2015 the lawsuit doesn’t even start until October! It’s been 6 years since this started and they still haven’t had their day in court.

When the Juggalo March on Washington was announced it was met with mostly mockery and not much else. Just a couple months ago when I was at the Gathering of the Juggalos even juggalos didn’t seem to be taking it that seriously. It was sort of an attitude of “this won’t change anything”. It wasn’t until the blog Metal Sucks wrote about the Juggalo March being held at the same time as a pro-Trump rally called the Mother of All Rallies (MOAR) that people started paying attention.

Once the Metal Sucks blog came out I saw people on Twitter making joke after joke about juggalos fighting nazis and these (truthfully hilarious) memes about some sort of progressive mob of juggalos rising up and murdering nazis with hatchets in league with Antifa. People kept Tweeting me about these things over and over because they know me as the juggalo photographer, but I wanted to take this seriously.

At the Gathering fellow juggalo journalist Camille Dodero and I were talking about how we thought leftist groups should really get behind the juggalos because it’s a civil rights issue. This FBI think is such bullshit and this feels very important even if you don’t care about juggalos. So when people started making juggalo antifa memes I figured I had to explain to my followers why juggalos were actually marching. They weren’t fighting nazis or protesting Trump… they wanted the FBI (and local law enforcement) to leave them the fuck alone.

I started a thread of Tweets that got a few likes and then nothing, but whenever I would see memes I would respond and link them to my Twitter thread. A couple days later as I was going to bed someone retweeted them, and then a few more and when I woke up my phone had exploded and thousands of people were liking and RTing them. People from both sides of the political aisle were retweeting them and it actually became an official Twitter Moment. It was pretty crazy for me, but the really surprising thing was that the responses were overwhelmingly positive.

For the first time in the history of the Insane Clown Posse people were on their side. (Side note: I am not taking credit for this, I just wanted to talk about my small part in it.) Article after article came out about ICP and editors started assigning the march to journalists. Playboy reached out to me about covering it and DCist interviewed me for a story. Former juggalo clients of mine like Vice and Rolling Stone sent teams of people instead. Time and the Guardian and the Washington Post took notice. People started paying attention to this travesty of justice.

So that brings us to the march and me on 90 minutes of sleep getting out of an Uber 100 yards from the Lincoln Memorial. I get out of the car and see hundreds of juggalos gathering around the stage set up in front of the Reflecting Pool on the Mall. The event hadn’t even started yet and there were juggalos everywhere intermingling with tourists.

But it wasn’t just tourists, there were random punk kids and a sprinkling of Antifa (I didn’t shoot them because they had journalists interviewing them at all times).  I met middle aged people wearing juggalo march shirts who didn’t know anything about juggalos but wanted to support. A big group of Democratic Socialists were out handing out flyers and Faygo Not Fascism signs. There were all sorts of people who were just there to back up the juggalo cause.

As far as the juggalos, I saw so many people I knew from Gatherings and ICP events. There were juggalos from every type of background, color and age. There were babies and old men in wheelchairs and veterans and priests and even cthulhu. I met people from all over the country and everyone was hugging everyone, meeting strangers and having a blast.

After everyone gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial the speeches started. We heard from juggalos across the country who had their lives turned upside down from this FBI gang designation. There was woman who had lost her job as a parole officer and a woman who had been kicked out of the military. It was just story after story of completely unfair consequences all because of this absurd gang list. ICP’s lawyer spoke and read a letter from the ACLU and a bunch of my fellow juggalo journalists spoke. Camille spoke, as did Mitchell Sunderland, Nathan Rabin, Steve Miller and Scottie D. Mitchell has covered juggalos for Vice and Broadly and Nathan and Steve have both written books about juggalos. Scottie is the founder of Faygo Luvers the biggest juggalo blog on the planet and someone who has always spread the word about my juggalo photos.

Finally ICP got on stage. They gave an impassioned speech about the gang designation and brought their families and friends out. The stage was packed with everyone from Psychopathic records and their families. After getting the crowd going they had everyone assemble and we begun to march.

I took a ton of photos as we walked around the mall but at some point I just got really into it. I have spent years of my life trying to explain juggalos to the world and this seemed like this really magical moment where people were actually listening. Random onlookers seemed really interested in what was going on and everyone I talked to seemed to support what the juggalos were doing. I even started leading chants and getting involved in the protesting as much as the documenting.

At some point during the march I ran into Anna Merlan a journalist I know (her work on conspiracy theorists is incredible) and she had left the MOAR event because it was completely pointless and decided to check out the Juggalo March. She said it was a couple hundred people and a total bust which made me really happy. As the day went on I heard more and more about how pathetic the MOAR event was and that contrast with the really successful Juggalo March made the juggalos look even better. It was perfect.

This article is getting really long and I feel like I have so much to say but let me just pause to mention that I grew up in DC going to protests and the DC Police are so good at crowd control and not letting things get out of hand. I have seen protests in other cities go haywire so quickly, but in DC the cops know exactly what they are doing. And I point this out because there were almost no cops at all at the juggalo march. There were a few spread out mostly blocking traffic. They clearly understood what was going on with the march and just left everyone alone. I didn’t see a single police interaction or any negative event at all to be honest.

As the march wrapped up back at the Lincoln Memorial I was pretty much destroyed. I was running all around the route trying to capture everything on 90 minutes of sleep the day after my band had played a show where I had beat the hell out of myself. I chugged a gatorade and chased it with a bottle of water and walked around the Lincoln Memorial with some punk girls I met when we both happened to notice that Ian MacKaye was watching the juggalos. One of them gave me a bunch of stickers with her boobs on them which I appreciated.

As we walked around some bands played and I took it easy waiting until ICP would finally headline the post march concert. After the girls dipped I talked to some more journalists and juggalos and ate some cold McDonald’s cheeseburgers that Psychopathic TV had laying around backstage. All I could think about was passing out but I couldn’t miss this set. Finally around 9PM, more than 8 hours after I got there ICP started to play. I tell everyone who hasn’t seen them that no matter what you think of their music you need to see one of their shows. They put on this wild set and it’s like a religious experience to their fans. That combination makes for an incredible moment even if you don’t like their music, but after all the shows I have seen, it was still surreal to watch them with the Lincoln Memorial on one side and the Washington Monument on the other.

When I finally got back to my parents apartment I was just done with being alive but I had to send images to my clients that night. I dumped the images and took a bath and washed the Faygo, sweat and sunblock off me while they transferred. One of my old friends came over and he and his girlfriend hung out while I edited. He and I liked ICP back in the 90’s when we were kids so it was cool to hang out with him while I worked. I finally finished editing around 3am and got a couple hours of sleep before I headed back to NYC for a hurricane Irma fundraiser I had to host in the afternoon. That night I slept for 10 hours. It was a hell of a weekend.

The best part of this whole thing was that nearly all the press coverage was super positive. I really think this is a big moment for juggalos. Maybe people will finally respect them a little bit or at least just leave them alone. So before I get to my coverage I wanna share with you a couple videos I thought were particularly good. Both of them feature my friend Chris AKA Mankini who to be honest is the perfect subject for a video about the march. He’s from the area so he let dozens of people stay with him, he is super nice and of course he’s a giant dude who wears a bikini all the time. You can’t beat that. So check out the Reason video about the march and then check out the Guardian video which I am actually in the background of a couple of times.

Now finally we get to my coverage…

First check out my Playboy article. I wrote the (heavily edited) intro, and interviewed juggalos and took all the photos. It’s almost as if I am an actual journalist.

I also did a big gallery for Voice Media Group who I always shoot juggalos for. Here’s just the LA Weekly gallery since they are all the same even though it was published via a bunch of alt weeklies.

And now finally here’s my huge gallery:

Click here for all my photos from the Juggalo March On Washington!

On Saturday I went to a party/show/classic motorcycle rally. My friends at Sailor Jerry were sponsoring the event in the Broadway Stages parkinglot in Greenpoint and asked me to come by. A bunch of bands were playing and there were some solid food trucks and a ton of vintage motorcycles. Seemed like a good time.

I got there pretty early so I was in time to see Julia Haltigan go on and then I photographed a bunch of the bikes and hung out with the Sailor Jerry crew. They were giving away a hand painted Harley and the had someone live painting a helmet with classic Sailor Jerry flash. I hung out with the homie & SJ brand ambassador Gravy Thomas who never stops moving throwing these SJ events across the country. Every time they do one of these motorcycle events I wanna buy a bike but am 100% sure I would wreck it in a week in NYC traffic.

As the sun started to go down Sharmuffin started playing and they were great. Their front woman got in the crowd and finally turned the block party into a rock show which I appreciated. I was actually supposed to be somewhere else after that but I wanted to stick around for Daddy Long Legs. I shot them at the Beauty Bar 20th anniversary party and they were really fun and I am glad I stuck around.

I did have to leave before Dirty Fences played but the party was 10 hours long and I had to get a bunch of stuff done by Monday (which is why these photos didn’t go up until today.) But I’ve shot them before too and they are really fun. Wish I could have stuck around.

Anyway check out these photos because even if you don’t care about old motorcycles and rock bands you will care about the photos of adorable dogs at the party.

Click here to see all the photos from The Lot vintage motorcycle party!

Okay! This is it! Final post of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos. I know how much you guys like looking at photos of juggalos. This is probably the biggest gallery of the four days with nearly 200 photos. Gonna run through the day real quick and then end with a bunch of links to all my coverage from around the internets.

Oh and speaking of coverage, I got a name drop on the second to last ever episode of @midnight last night. That was kinda cool.

Day four was the final day and of course it all ended with a crazy set from Insane Clown Posse. Even if you hate their music, their sets, especially at the Gathering are totally worth watching. I always like watching them with people who have never seen them because they go from mocking to on board in about 10 minutes. Even at this under attended, last minute Gathering in Oklahoma the conclusion of their set was a hell of a moment.

Before ICP went on there were sets from POD and this dude Prof who was actually pretty great. People were throwing water balloons full of ketchup, mustard and brightly colored water at him and he seemed to love it. Personally my camera smells like mustard now so I was less excited.

The only other thing worth mentioning in this gallery was the piñata madness that happened. This juggalo who I have met a bunch of times over the years named Poncho walked around the campgrounds collecting shit for two piñatas and had everyone break them open on the last day. There was so much insane shit in them and juggalos basically tried to murder each other for shit. It was like in a movie when they throw a dead body in a pen of starving pigs. I ended up with a beer, a can of off brand Nutella and a clown nose. I still have the clown nose.

Okay, that’s all I got here’s all my coverage and then we will get to the day 4 photos at the end.

Voice Media Galleries (LA Weekly, Miami New Times, Houston Press, etc):
The Party Begins at the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Best Dressed of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Juggalos of the 2017 Gathering Show Us Their Ink
The Extreme Scenes of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Gathering of the Juggalos 2017: Welcome to Juggalo Island
Clown Love: The Cutest Couples of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Grand Finale: The 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos Comes to a Close

Voice Media Article:
Turns Out Moving the Gathering of the Juggalos to Oklahoma Was a Bad Idea

Chicagoist:
Get Weird With Our NSFW Photos From The 2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Brooklyn Vegan:
Gathering of the Juggalos 2017 (ICP, Waka Flocka, Faygo, pasties & more)

@Midnight:
Juggalo missed connections (around the 18min mark)

Driven By Boredom:
For all Driven By Boredom’s Gathering of the Juggalos content over the last 7 years click here.

And finally, click here for the final, mildly NSFW gallery from day 4 of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

Okay, I promised two updates today but I lied. It’s 8pm already and no one wants a post at fucking 11pm so you get this one today, another one tomorrow and then back to naked people and party pictures on Monday. Let’s get into this shit.

Day three of the Gathering was my longest day there. I got there early cause I wanted to shoot a bunch of day time stuff for my “Juggalo Island” gallery. (Bonus content: watch this fucking video.) After being outside for an hour I wanted to die so I headed over to Psychopathic Radio to take some photos of the madness that Wolfpac’s gets into every day. The first event they had was a juggalo drinking contest. They had two juggalos take 10 shots each. One of them made it about two shots in before puking. The other crushed his. After he was finished and the other guy was done vomiting, the sick juggalo finished the rest of his shots. I saw him 45 minutes later and he had completely lost his fucking mind. Good times.  After that they had a round of the infamous juggalo fight club. Two brothers faced off and kicked the shit out of each other for three rounds. That was real fucking enjoyable.

At some point during all that my GOTJ date Gia Paige put stickers on her nipples which made the rest of the day interesting because every five minutes we’d be stopped by some juggalo who wanted to smoke weed with her or take her photo or in the case of a cop want to take her stickers off and put new ones on. Another cop just said “Niiiicee” to her which was creepier than anything the juggalos did. How delightful.

After that the bands started playing. I shot a mosh pit and ate a far too spicy burrito while waiting for Waka Flocka to go on. He played one of the best sets I have ever seen at the Gathering in 2015 and I was really psyched for his set. He did not disappoint. He called on juggalos to get him drunk and people threw beers at him which he caught and chugged. He then was handed a bottle of Fireball which he chugged as well. He jumped into the crowd and played several songs in there while juggalos and security chased him around. I jumped over the photo pit and followed him too. I even got off a couple selfies. After he got back on stage he brought some girls out of the crowd and that was fun too. Overall I took way too many photos of him and posted way too many of them here. Enjoy.

The night ended with fucking Vanilla Ice headlining. He was mostly promoting a home improvement show on the DIY Network or something. Honestly I stuck around for two songs, took some photos and went back to my hotel cause I was exhausted and let’s just say I wanted to hang out with Gia Paige more than I wanted to see a rap rock version of Ice Ice Baby. Sue me.

Now click here for a ton of mildly NSFW photos from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City. 

Day two of the Gathering of the Juggalos was cool because Gia Paige showed up. I met her in LA right around the time my LA Weekly writer told me he couldn’t make the trip. I jokingly said she should come with me since I had an extra press pass and she actually said yes. She’s from Detroit so she was kinda familiar with ICP and seemed pretty unfazed by the whole thing. It was pretty great.

As far as stuff that actually happened on the second day I pretty much started out photographing the VIP meet and greet thing. I got to talk to some juggalos about their memorabilia and shoot the clowns with their fans. I shot a bunch of tattoos for a gallery I did for the LA Weekly and I shot a bunch of portraits that ended up in their “best dressed juggalos” gallery.

That night ICP played their album “The Wraith” in it’s entirety. The Wraith is the 6th Jokers Card and it was supposed to be the last album before the world ended in ICP mythology. Weirdly enough the world didn’t end when it came out, but Juggalos did get a surprise when it was revealed that the “Dark Carnival” was really just a juggalo form of Christianity. Seriously. If you haven’t heard “Thy Unveiling” do yourself a favor and listen to it. It’s way funnier than Miracles ever was.

Late night I shot Wolfpac cause their sets are always a total shit show. They aren’t quite as fun when nudity is outlawed but the photos are probably worth looking at anyway. Lil Debbie was supposed to play later that night but she didn’t show up. She Tweeted that she was playing the next night but I had no idea when so I skipped it. But I was real curious to see what her juggalo set was gonna look like. I still have no idea if she ever actually played.

Okay go look at photos now. Two more updates coming tomorrow…

Click here to see all the mildly NSFW photos from day 2 of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

I got back from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos a few days ago but I have taken my sweet time to post these because most of them are already online via the LA Weekly (and all the other Voice Media papers). I will post all those links in part four of this madness. In past years I have broken these photos down by subject but this is my 8th god damn one of these and I just wanna get these photos up and move on with my life. The plan is two posts today and two posts tomorrow and then on to whatever comes next.

Let’s start by talking about what every juggalo in the festival was talking about: Oklahoma sucks. The Gathering was supposed to be in Colorado but several venues fell through because the FBI designates juggalos as a gang because apparently the FBI has never actually met a juggalo. At the last minute they found this place called Lost Lakes Amphitheater in Oklahoma City and it turned out to be kinda a disaster for a bunch of reasons. First of all beer in Oklahoma is watered down which is like some shit I thought they only pulled in Utah. All hard liquor was theoretically outlawed and the place was full of undercover cops were arresting people for selling drugs and supposedly public nudity. I saw supposedly because I only heard rumors but all the nudity got shut down. Not sure how you can even call it a festival with everyone sober and clothed. The place also had weird cut off times for music, it was hot as balls, it was far from the midwest where most juggalos live, it was spread out over miles and the line up sucked. There were probably a third of the juggalos there as normal It was a total bummer.

Aside from all that it was not completely terrible. The combination of the brutal heat and the line up sucking meant I showed up late every day and still managed to take a million fucking photos. I didn’t have to worry about shooting the bands so I could focus on just shooting juggalos cause I knew I couldn’t sell any of the band photos. Oh and my hotel had a pool plus Gia Paige came with me for three of the four days. So really it was chill as fuck.

Day one I only had one gallery due and I flew in to Oklahoma City that day so I didn’t get down to the Gathering until about 7pm. I had an hour of light to get a few shots and then popped on the flash. Mushroomhead headlined and they are real weird looking so I took photos of them and then hung out with Mike Busey and his “Busey Beauties” who have been the highlight of the last few Gatherings. They had to keep stuff PG and they shut down their stage at 11pm cause of the stupid noise rules so I just hung out with them on their bus mostly. It was air conditioned, full of strippers and there was a pug. 0 complaints.

Anyway, that’s all I got for the first update. Day two is coming in a few hours. It’s a much bigger gallery.

Click here to see the mildly NSFW photos from day one of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

Last night I threw the second and last Instaxxx release party. The NYC one was fun, the LA version was fucking insane. I am always stressed out when I throw parties and there was plenty of shit to get stressed out over but the party was actually really good and I would have had a ton of fun if I wasn’t the one throwing it.

Superchief Gallery LA is such a great space in DTLA and I am really glad I threw the party there. That being said they don’t really have a DJ set up and apparently I either borrowed the wrong stuff or not enough stuff so Carter Cruise had to DJ off iTunes. It was pretty hilarious but she kinda killed it anyway. When her set was over she was laughing about how she only had the music on her Itunes cloud and so she ran out of music “at some point I just played an A-Trak mix for 2o minutes.”  Sorry Carter!

By the time Kate Mo$$ played it was already after 10 and the party was supposed to end at 10. It did not. Kate Mo$$ played a short insane set that was pretty perfect for the party. I unfortunately missed half of it cause I was doing shit but I am really glad they came out. It was total madness.

Joseline Kelly played after that and then I took photo of her in a bathroom cause the bathrooms at Superchief are grimy and cool looking so clearly I had to shoot some photos in there.

Speaking of girls in bathrooms, huge thanks to Charlotte Sartre and Riley Nixon for hanging out topless on a couch all night. Not sure the photo booth worked exactly how we planned it but it made the party a lot more fun.

I think that’s it. Thanks to everyone who came out and partied with me and thanks to everyone who bought a book. If you are in LA and still want one get at me quick cause I have about 10 more books than I want to take home with me.

Buy a book here.

Oh, and also I should mention that these photos have an unreasonable amount of nudity in them. Enjoy.

Click here to see the NSFW photos from the Instaxxx LA release party at Superchief Gallery LA.

Meant to get these Brooklyn Zombie Crawl pics up a few days ago but let’s just say I was a little bit preoccupied shipping out hundreds of books this week before I head to LA tomorrow for the LA Instaxxx book release. Let’s just say it’s been a crazy fucking few weeks. I have been working non-stop on Instaxxx so the zombie crawl was a nice break on Sunday.

The crawl started at the Charleston in Williamsburg where we were greeted by zombie Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD and Ben Kissel from the horror podcast Last Podcast On The Left. Kissel is running for Brooklyn Borough President was the “grand marshall” of the zombie crawl. I don’t know enough about him to endorse him but he’s for criminal justice reform and a quick look at his Twitter has progressive Tweets about immigration and LGBQT issues so I am on board with all that. Plus Borough Presidents don’t really have a lot of power so voting for him probably couldn’t hurt… although anyone who has been endorsed by Gary Johnson worries me a little bit.

We left the Charleston around 6:30 and walked to McCarren Park. For some reason there were a bunch of Guardian Angels with us which was kinda cool given that I don’t think I have seen one in the entire time I have lived in NYC. Glad they are still around. We stopped at the park quickly for a group photo and then headed to Greenpoint to stop for drinks at A-Bar. I haven’t been there since the opening, but I ran into a few friends there who had no idea the undead were coming.

From A-Bar we hit Brooklyn Bazaar for the after party where we were met by come competitive eaters in town for the 4th of July including my friend Tim “Gravy” Brown and Michelle Lesco who came in second in the women’s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating contest. Competitive eating legend Badlands Booker was there too but he was there for the entire zombie crawl.

I didn’t take a ton of photos at the after party because my band actually played it but I got some shots of the other bands including Jess O’Lantern, J and The 9’s, and Uncle Jake and the 18 Wheel Gang. Plus my friend Lunchbox did some horrifying sideshow shit and “Everything is Terrible!” headlined with their insane video projections and super weird performance. I wish I could explain the whole thing but I was back stage getting ready for our show. All I know is that they are building a pyramid of Jerry Maguire VHS tapes and I wanna fucking see that shit.

Anyway, my band closed out the night and I ate a raw potato on stage for the two dozen people who suck around after Everything Is Terrible. I have no idea how the potato got on stage but let me tell you, don’t eat a raw potato like an apple because it tastes terrible and it makes it quite difficult to sing.

I gotta pack for LA now. I will post again when I have all the details of the LA Instaxxx book release party worked out but it’s July 14th if you happen to be around. Go look at zombie photos now.

Click here for photos from the 2017 Brooklyn Zombie Crawl!

Last night I got to hang out on an aircraft carrier which is probably the coolest location I have been to for a party in all my years of partying. Fleet week started yesterday and Sailor Jerry threw their Fleet Week kick off party on the USS Intrepid. The Intrepid is a decommissioned WWII aircraft carrier that is now a museum and apparently a fantastic place to party.

It was hard to beat the Fleet Week kick off party last year which featured Cage The Elephant and Norman Reedus but the Alabama Shakes played this year and when you mix that with the insane location it was one hell of a time.

For some insane reason they gave Daniel “Gravy” Thomas a wireless mic so most of the night featured Gravy running around like a mad man buying sailors rum and hyping the party while Ian Saint Laurent DJd. Around 9 Alabama Shakes came on and ended the party properly. I haven’t really listened to them before but I left fairly impressed.

I really like some of these photos because the scenery was so amazing. You probably are gonna wanna check these pictures out.

Click here to see the photos from Sailor Jerry’s Fleet Week kick off party on the USS Intrepid.