2024 Gathering Of The Juggalos After Dark

Welcome to another day of my 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos coverage. Today we got some nightlife photos or something. Basically everyday I would go down to the Gathering around 5pm and shoot until it got dark. Once it was too dark to shoot without a flash I would walk back to my rental car, drop off whatever 35mm camera I had with me and pick up my flash and head back down.

The problem is I hate shooting with flash these days. It’s weird, I used to shoot everything with flash, even portraits, but I am so over it. I just hate the way flash looks these days and it’s so pitch black at the Gathering that the focus assist light is super fucking annoying for everyone. You add to that the fact that I am old and tired and didn’t want to stay up until 4am every night I didn’t shoot a ton of late night photos, that being said I did shoot SOME stuff at night. 

The first night was the only night I stayed up late because on night two I was so fucking tired, night three the battery door on my flash broke (luckily I had an extra door) and on night four I left early. But night one was pretty good. I shot two events in this red circus tent and I fucking HATE the light in there. In the day it’s worse but even at night with a flash it’s so red because the flash bounces off the red roof. I said fuck it and just made every one of those photos black and white. 

The first night one event was the Queen of Cheeks which was an ass contest, seriously. Last year was the first year they had it and the photos I took were so fucking insane I had to come back. This year’s was slightly more sedate, but still VERY NSFW. There was a ring toss and a butt cheek Faygo carrying contest and god knows what else. Of course I had to paywall most of this stuff. I included some safe for work images, but 90% of it was too NSFW for this site. You can see everything, plus all my other NSFW content, on Girls of Driven By Boredom. I also uploaded a pretty tame video to the same site. I made it just $3 which is the lowest I am allowed to charge, and made it free to subscribers. 

After the Queen of Cheeks ended the Chapter 17 Records party took place. My buddy Kev Buc was DJing for some of it, and Ouija Macc was there and some other musicians and stuff. It was pretty fun. Lots of cute juggalettes were hanging out including the adult film start Kazumi who put a butt plug in live on stage which resulted in some pretty great photos I wish I could show you but of course I can’t because once again we live in a society created by and governed by religious extremists. They are of course available on Girls of Driven By Boredom.

The other night I stayed out at all past midnight was the second night because my old pal Zac Amico was doing stand up. I was glad to see him but I was kinda afraid his stand up was gonna be some edgelord bullshit trying to be offensive because I know he does a lot of roast battles and he seems to hang with a bunch of comedians who complain about people being woke all the time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that while his set had some edge to it, it was mostly just storytelling and he told a few interesting and genuinely funny stories before I had to bounce so I could actually get some sleep after getting six hours total in the last 48. Someone opened for him and I forget his name and I feel like a dick for that but I know he was from Chicago and friends with my Gathering of the Juggalos pal wrestler Colt Cabana, cause I ran into Colt there.

Okay, so yeah, I didn’t go out on night two, but there are plenty of crowd shots in here too. Some of my favorites were taken at the end of ICP’s Thursday night set where I photographed everyone who was coming off stage. ICP does this “Faygo Armageddon” thing where they bring up about 100 people on stage to throw Faygo everywhere. I have actually done it twice myself and it is so god damn fun. Truly joyful. But yeah, soaked people are fun to photograph so got a lot of that stuff. 

Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything else worth mentioning, just go check out the gallery and I will be back tomorrow with even more NSFW stuff and we will wrap everything up on Monday. See you soon.

Click here to see all the after dark photos from the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos.

And click here for the NSFW stuff!

Juggalos After Dark

Ouija Macc

Juggalos After Dark

Kazumi & Milan Alexandrea

Juggalos After Dark

Queen Of Cheeks

Juggalos After Dark

Juggalos Is Brat

Wakko The Kid & Uncle Juff

 

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2024 Pepe Fest – 8.10.24

On Saturday, I went to Pepe Fest, a festival honoring one of the most infamous memes, thrown by Beeple at his studio in Charleston, SC. Now if you know what all of those words mean, you can skip the next five paragraphs because I am gonna drop a Pepe/Beeple for Dummies, given that most of my readers will have no fucking idea what is going on.

Okay, let’s start with Pepe The Frog. Pepe was a character created by an artist named Matt Furie for a comic book called Boy’s Club. Boy’s Club was about a bunch of animals living together and partying just being dudes (look, I have never actually read the comic, I hope that is a fair description). In one strip Pepe is caught peeing with his pants pulled all the way down and when confronted about why he did that he said “Feels Good Man”. Those three words spurned a meme that would eventually spiral out of control, used by 4chan trolls to express the worst possible views and became a symbol of the alt right and the rise of Trumpism in 2016. 

Matt Furie was pretty pissed about this, and there’s a good documentary about the lengths he took to get the good name of Pepe back. It’s appropriately titled Feels Good Man and is a good dive into the alt right and the rise of Trump meme culture, incells and 4chan in general. I do think Furie’s efforts paid off, because these days Pepe is almost entirely used in a positive, or at least harmless ways. I don’t think I saw any memes all weekend that I thought were too fucked up. 

One thing the documentary barely touches on is the very early days of digital art on the block chain. There is one scene where a crypto bro in a Lambo buys a jpg for $39k which seemed absolutely crazy in 2019. That same jpg sold in 2021 for nearly 10x that. But the documentary doesn’t go deep into “Rare Pepes”. Despite listening to people talk about Rare Pepe’s for three days straight I don’t know enough about the history not to just quote Wikipedia, so just read that.

Quickly though, the first Rare Pepe’s were minted in 2016 on the Bitcoin blockchain, which predated Ethereum NFTs by about a year. You could create your own, and sell them for Pepe Cash and then use that to buy other Rare Pepes. Eventually there was a Fake Rares collection and now there are Notable Pepes on Ethereum and a billion other Pepe NFTs that little the internet. There is also a $PEPE coin that I bought $20 of for the meme and then sold for like a grand after I forgot about it for a year. I’d say I wish I bought more, but if I had I probably would have sold it way before it 50xed. 

Now that Pepe has been explained, we also have to talk about Beeple. Beeple is the alias of Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist who started uploading one artwork every day and has been doing that every day since 2007. In 2020 he started selling his Everydays as NFTs and sold an image of his first 5000 Everydays for $69 million dollars in 2021 at the peak of the NFT bubble. He has used that money to buy a massive art space in Charleston, SC which we will get to in a minute. 

Okay, this is where you can jump back in if you want to just know about the party and not the very basic explanation about what the hell is going on. So when I moved to Wilmington, NC the first thing I did was find out what actual cities were in driving distance. Raleigh was close, only two hours away. Charlotte was a little farther, but still an easy drive and finally Charleston, SC, the one city of the three that I had never been to. I was immediately looking for an excuse to get down there, so when I saw Beeple was throwing a party at his insane studios I had to go.

You had to own some Pepe stuff to get in, and I didn’t really qualify for a ticket. I bought back a little of the $PEPE I sold so I could RSVP, but there as also a Pepe art submission. Despite going to art school, I am trash at drawing, so I knew I wasn’t getting in that way, but if AI is good for anything, it’s good for making low effort art. One day I had the phrase “Be the meme you want to see in the world” suck in my head and I had MidJourney shit out a photo of a vaguely Pepe looking frog looking in the mirror and I had made a meme. I made it before AI got good at Pepe, and I just made it to post on Twitter or something, but when I saw the Pepe contest, I just dug around my computer until I found it and sent it in, not expecting to get picked but I did.

Side note, I minted it as a free NFT just so I could give it to people at the festival, but I forgot about it, so if you want to mint one for some reason, it’s still open for a few days

So because I got my art into the show I got invited to an artist dinner on Friday night and an artist brunch on Sunday. I felt super out of place on Friday. I knew one person and am not invested in Pepe culture so I was just sort of standing around for a bit of it and I ended up leaving early, but it was still a really cool thing and I met a bunch of people which made me slightly less awkward the next day at the actual Fest. It’s really funny that I have spent my entire life in an incredibly social field and was never uncomfortable in any space, but shit like this gets me. 

On Saturday I went over to Beeple Studios and it was fucking incredible. The museum section was closed but the event space was absolutely insane. You will see the pictures, but imagine a room the size of a basketball gym but three of the four walls are covered in massive digital screens. The support beams are covered in screens and even the tables had screens. It was really amazing. 

I brought my camera but it was so dark in there and I left my flash in the car. I wasn’t trying to take the shuttle bus back to my car to grab it so I made due and took a few photos of the space, and some of the speakers and stuff. A woman named Pepelangelo was doing a live painting and had a whole wall of her images of Pepe as masterpieces. The Venus Devouring Pepe Goya homage was my favorite. There was some other physical art as well and that room was will lit so I got photos there. Inside the space they had Pepes on the walls, including mine, but there were so many I only saw mine twice. They also had speakers talking about Pepe and Rare Pepe’s and memes and all sorts of stuff. There was also a Pepe art contest and the four winners got to draw live later that night. 

There was a four hour break in between events. I tried to go to a museum but I got there 20 min before closing so I just walked around downtown Charleston for almost two hours. It was 99% humidity and like 95 degrees out so not the most enjoyable time, but it was cool to see the city. I got some food and cleaned up at my hotel room before heading back out.

The night event was infinitely cooler than the day time one and I was really impressed by the day time. First of all the gallery/museum section was open and it was awesome to see Beeple’s art in real life. He does a lot of pop culture stuff, but like, with dicks, so you might not think it would work in a museum setting, but it really does. Seeing the 5000 Everyday’s across a massive wall was amazing. His collection of old computers was pretty great as well. 

There was a Pepe costume contest so a ton of people were dressed up, but Beeple also had a bunch of people walking around with incredibly realistic masks on making them look like celebrities but because you have to wear the masks over your head they are slightly too big which ads to the uncanny valley aspect and just made them look so cursed. There were also Pepe’s walking Boston Dynamics robot Pepe dogs and three people in Beeple masks. It was also super unsettling in the best possible way. 

There was a scavenger hunt for Pepe swag (I ended up with a pretty sick frog hat that my girlfriend told me she will leave me if I wear in public), an outdoor patio with a giant inflatable Pepe, and a Cyber Truck for some reason. OG Pepe artist Rare Scrilla DJd Pepe themed music. The live drawing contest had the tablets projected on the screens so you could see people work from anywhere and the winner won $5000, I think, it’s possible they just won an oversized check and some shoes, I didn’t look into it. The costume contest happened super quick, for $1000, but it gave us some of the best photos of the night. 

Beeple also made Everyday #6311 live from the event. He has a terminal set up in the middle of the room and you can watch him work on a screen on the other side of the terminal, but then it was also projected on the walls. He gave himself a 30 min timer and then it was uploaded to the internets almost immediately. 

At the end of the night, after the costume contest, printers in the ceiling shot out prints of the four art contest entries as well as Everyday #66311 and a few other Pepe themed Beeple Everydays that were numbered to just 7. People crawled all over each other to grab them. I grabbed one and it was the artist who won the contest. He was standing right in front of me and I asked him if he wanted it and he did so I gave it away. The karma paid off later when the one person I knew at the event gave me one of the Beeple prints. He was signing them, but the line was crazy so I just went back to my hotel room. 

I did bring it to the brunch though and he ended up signing it there. The brunch felt so different to the dinner. I didn’t feel awkward anymore and had a great time. I met some rad people and talked to Beeple for a bit. Plus I had several biscuits. Look, I don’t know why I am talking about Biscuits when this thing is nearly 2000 words already and I have a 6am flight to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos, but here we are. Let’s just get to some pictures.

Click here to see all my photos from 2024 Pepe Fest at Beeple Studios in Charleston, SC.

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

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Assholes Live Forever AVN Party – 1.24.24

If you aren’t familiar with Assholes Live Forever, you’ve still probably seen one of their t-shirts in some viral post. The “edgy” clothing company has blown up in the last few years and I see it everywhere. Normally I am probably a little too woke to be associating myself with a company that posts sexist memes as a marketing strategy but the company happens to be run by my buddy Kirill, the former party photographer Kirill Was Here, who I have known since our nightlife days in NYC fifteen years ago. Kirill took what we were doing in nightlife and turned it into a TV show, a Vegas residency and now a hugely successful fashion brand and I am proud as hell of the dude, even if I would probably hate his internet persona if I didn’t know him. 

When I knew I was heading to the AVN Awards I hit him up and he told me he was not only gonna be in town but he was throwing a party. When he sent the link it was being thrown by Jardin, a cannabis company in Vegas. Last time I went to one of their parties they had mermaids in the pool and super cars parked in the driveway and was like the cheesy mansion  party vibe you only really see in movies. That last party you could pay to get in, so it was like 20% hot girls and 80% rich bros so it was not where I wanted to be, but I knew and ALF party thrown by Kirill and adult film star Damon Dice would be a lot more fun and I was right. 

I took a party bus to the party with another edgelord friend of mine, Charlie Classic and when we got there it was already popping off. The party was as expected, mansion, pool, step and repeat, backyard yurt filled with pillows, you get the idea. They had a chef cooking up waffles that looked like dicks and Flava Flav was hanging out. The party was mostly porn stars and I had a bunch of friends there so it was a lot of fun, but maybe the best part was Kirill walking around introducing me to girls as the “photographer who inspired my career” which is only a little true but shows you what a good dude Kirill is, and of course it lead to way better pictures. 

Now speaking of pictures, about 1/3 of these photos are too NSFW for this site and are behind a paywall. That’s mostly Kirill’s fault so blame him, but between the girls flashing me, a mini photo shoot on a basketball court and Sabrina Nichole walking around mostly topless all night, I had to post a ton of this site exclusively to Girls of Driven By Boredom. But if you go over there, not only does it have the 20 extra NSFW photos, but they are in a slightly higher resolution AND you will have access to nearly every nude photo I have ever taken which is an absolutely enormous amount, hundreds of galleries, tens of thousands of photos. 

Anyway the party was fun, I took a lot of photos (can’t wait to see the 35mm stuff when it gets developed) and thanks a ton to Kirill for having me. So proud of you man.

Click here to see all the tame photos from the Assholes Live Forever AVN Slumber Party in Las Vegas.

Click here to see all the NSFW photos from the Assholes Live Forever AVN Slumber Party in Las Vegas.

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2023 Miami Art Week

Two weeks ago I went to Miami for Art Basel/ Miami Art Week and a Dolphins game on Monday Night Football and the entire thing was a disaster so let’s break that down, post a handful of pictures and then let’s never speak of it again. Honestly I wouldn’t normally post any of this but I didn’t spend a bunch of time and money on this trip and come back with zero content, so here we go. Enjoy.

There have been a bunch of times in my life where I have gone to Miami with no plans and ended up having a great time, coming back with a ton of great photos and ultimately making some money. It’s been so consistent in my life that when I saw that Basel was happening the same week as a Monday Night Football game I was ready to book the trip and then figure it out later. Problem is I didn’t exactly know my dates. Ideally I would show up Friday and leave Tuesday morning but I had a new client who didn’t know the details of their event yet and so I couldn’t book the trip quite yet. Meanwhile I had a meeting with a second possible client who seemed to want me for a several day event and the only details we needed to work out was how long I was going to work for how much money. That gig started on Thursday afternoon so I finally confirmed my other client for Friday so I booked the trip, Thursday to Tuesday and got a non refundable hotel pretty close to one of the jobs because I am an idiot.

Shortly after I booked the trip my first client, the one that had confirmed all the details pulled out. Fortunately they gave me a kill fee that still pretty much paid for the trip but it went from being a money making trip to a break even one real quick. As we got closer and closer to the week it became clear that the second client had just ghosted me. I have no idea why or what happened but suddenly I was in Miami for four days with no jobs and nothing planned. I also happened to be busy as hell with a trip to NC for my girlfriend’s birthday, the big Dolfans NYC event I was throwing and then a trip to DC to see my folks since I missed Thanksgiving. Suddenly the Miami trip was on top of me and I had nothing planned. 

A few days before I left I went into panic mode, sending emails to old clients, friends I hadn’t seen in years an a bunch of models in Miami. Figured if nothing else I could do some photo shoots. I managed to plan two shoots, but wouldn’t you believe it, they both flaked. There was a third model who was visiting that I was trying to work something out with but that never happened either. Perfect.

On Thursday my flight was super early so when I finally got to my hotel they didn’t have a room ready for me so I just sort of sat in the lobby for far too long. I had barely slept so I tried to take a nap and after failing at that I ordered some food and started texting some friends. I got invited to the job that I didn’t get hired for and to a nightclub and to a dinner way too far from my hotel room. It was great to see I had stuff to do, but I just didn’t want to do any of it, and I had a long week so I just stayed in and watched a terrible football game. 

The next day I had a bunch of things I wanted to do. The first one was my buddy Deeze’s party. He had released a toy and some clothes with a Web3 company called Goonz and they were throwing a party. I went down there and had a good time. I met a few people I knew just on the internet and met some new folks and took a few 35mm photos. It was a very chill couple of hours and I had no idea it was going to end up the highlight of the trip. From there I went over to the legendary dive bar Mac’s Club Deuce for a bit and hit the always fantastic Sandwicherie which I hadn’t been to in years. And that’s where the trip peaked. I got stuck in such bad traffic that I just sort of gave up and went back to my hotel and eventually took an Uber over to Wynwood. I figured I would check out the new Graffiti Museum but it was closing when I got there so I ran into my buddy Sean and walked around with him for a bit and then stopped by the job that I got the kill fee for. I have no idea why I went but they invited me and I figured I should try and say hi. I wasn’t there long before I went to the Fool’s Gold party which I was also only at briefly because I am old and tired. 

On Saturday I had a bunch of stuff to do, and I managed to do almost none of it. It was so god damn frustrating dealing with Miami traffic that is so much worse than it was even a couple of years ago. It is so much worse than LA which is everyone’s favorite traffic to complain about. The one thing I did do was go see my friend Noah who had a piece of art in a gallery not too far from my hotel. When I got there, there was a pop up custom Miami Dolphins t-shirt event where they had graffiti artists designing shirts for you which I thought was cool and they told me the wait was 30 minutes so I figured why not. I was gonna go see my buddy Buff Monster talk on a panel at the Museum of Graffiti at six but it was only 4 so I had plenty of time. Two hours later I was still waiting and the sunk cost fallacy had broken me and I wasn’t leaving without a t-shirt I will absolutely never wear. I tried to go back to Wynwood to meet up with Buff even if he was speaking but traffic broke me and looking for a parking spot was absolutely hell and after 45 minutes in the car I just completely gave up and went back to my hotel and for the second of my three nights in Miami I just hung out in my hotel room.

By this time Basel was pretty much over and I hadn’t taken a single photo with my digital camera. I wanted to give you guys content so I figured the easiest thing to do would just be to once again go back to Wynwood and just take some photos of the murals there. It’s not the first time I have done exactly that. I don’t know why anyone would give a fuck about these photos, but it’s something and you get to look at them. I also finally went to the Grafitti Museum which was cool but way too small. So many important artists barely got a mention if they did at all. Once I got enough stuff I drove up to Delray Beach where my Dolfans NYC co-founder lives and watched the 1pm football games until it was time to meet up with her at an ice skating rink where her beer league team had a game. I watched some bad hockey in a freezing rink in a t-shirt and then accidentally went on a toll road on the way back to her place which cost me $45 because car rental places love to rip you off. After having dinner with her and her family the two of us went to Target and bought $700 of toys for needy children with some of the money we raised for charity this season. That was so much fun and honestly that was the actual highlight of the trip. It was so rewarding seeing all those toys piled up in the back seat of Michelle’s car, knowing so many kids would have a better Christmas because of our little fan club.

The next day I just hung out at Michelle’s house and did some work and then it was time for me to watch one of the most disappointing football games I have ever witnessed, and I have been to some bad ones.  The night started out well because we delivered all the toys to the toy drive and the people who ran the toy drive rolled out the red carpet for us and showed us around and hooked us up with food and drinks and all that. They hooked us up with some incredible seats as well. It was a great VIP experience all the way up until the game started. The Dolphins had one injury after another and were barely keeping up with a team that is much worse than them. A guy behind me puked and when someone washed the vomit up, the vomit water rolled under my seat for the rest of the game. Eventually the Dolphins made some big plays and were up two touchdowns with about two minutes to go. They then managed to somehow lose the game in embarrassing, humiliating fashion. 

When I finally made it back to Brooklyn I realized I had left my iPad and ear buds on the plane and no one ever found them. Just an absolutely cursed trip, but wait, there’s more! I had this idea that would wait until I got my 35mm film developed from the trip to do this post. That’s why this post wasn’t up a week ago. I finally dropped off all my film and in absolutely incredible fashion I got six rolls back and it just happens that two of the three rolls with Miami stuff on it didn’t really come out. Turns out the auto focus on my point and shoot seems to have broken at some point and 75% of the photos on those two rolls were a blurry mess (including my 35mm juggalo boat photos from the other night).

TLDR: I went to Miami, made no money, had a miserable time and managed to lose and iPad and break a camera. But hey, I have a few mediocre photos for you. Merry Christmas, I should be back with a big update before the end of the year.

Click here to see some 35mm photos from my trip to Miami.

Click here to see some digital photos of street art in Wynwood. 

Miami Art Week

I Don't Know Who Any Of These People Are

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

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Ballas On A Boat – A Juggalo Cruise – 12.16.23

What could be more on brand for me than going to photograph a holiday Insane Clown Posse concert in international waters in the middle of the night? Okay, technically the boat was just circling the Statue of Liberty in the East River, but still, it was a weird time that I had to attend even though I wasn’t working for anyone. Just seemed like it was my journalistic duty. Did I mention it’s not the first time I have gone on an insane clown cruise?

Ballas on a Boat was a Christmas themed juggalo cruise put on by Rocks Off who specialize in doing shows on boats. The original event was scheduled for 7pm, but that one sold out so quickly that they added a second midnight cruise. When I saw the two options, it seemed like a no brainer to attend the late night one. Not only was the homie Ouija Macc playing, but I figured being on a boat with juggalos until 4am seemed like it had the potential for way more weirdness. 

When I arrived at the boat, juggalos from the first show were getting off and juggalos were set up selling nitrous balloons on a poorly lit dock which just felt really perfect. Reminded me of home, and by home I mean the Gathering of the Juggalos. I got on board and spent the first hour or so really just catching up with some juggalo friends I have made over the years including Ouija’s manager Kev Buc who I have gone to like a half dozen Gatherings with (who also got me on the boat) last minute. 

When we passed the Statue of Liberty so I had to go photograph juggalos photographing Lady Liberty and then Ouija played and the combination of my cold lens mixed with the heat of the show fogged my lens up. I also decided to bring my old camera and started messing around with dragging my shutter a little bit like in my old nightlife days so it made for some blurry but appropriately hectic Ouija photos. The lower level of the boat was so hot that the show felt more like a Bushwick basement show than it did a rock cruise.

Of course I made the same mistake after Ouija because it was so damn hot and I went on the deck again and almost immediately ICP started playing so I had to run downstairs and spend half the set wiping my lens. Fortunately there was a juggalo in front of me in a santa hat which was perfect for wiping my lens off. Eventually I got shoved to the front and was on my knees shooting the band which was a new experience for me shooting ICP. Usually it’s a huge production with a ton of Faygo flying everywhere, but this time I was almost too close to them in the hull of a sweaty boat. They played a short set with a bunch of Christmas songs, but it was fun to get to see them in a more intimate setting. 

After we docked I made it to land only to realize that I couldn’t get an Uber, but a juggalette offered to drive me home. I just had her drive me to a subway stop, but it’s the kindness of juggalos that makes me keep wanting to photograph them, even when any rational person would be done after 13 years documenting fans of a middle aged horrorcore rap group in clown makeup. 

A little housekeeping update, before we get to photos. I have an update from my recent trip from Miami ready to go, but I wanted develop the film first. I should have it back in a couple days so I will probably get it up towards the end of this week. You can sponsor one of those rolls and get cheap print of one of the photos on that roll (feel free to request the roll I shot on the juggalo boat). And while the sponsor a roll thing takes a while to get delivered, anything else ordered in my store by Wednesday will ship on Wednesday so you can maybe get it by Christmas. Just saying. And while we are here, I should plug my juggalo NFTs (and yes we are still trying to make NFTs happen. And fuck it, let’s plug Girl of DBB too. I will put some sort of NSFW juggalette content up there right now because I love you. Okay, now go look at clown boat photos. 

Click here to see all my photos from Ballas on A Boat, the Insane Clown Posse late night Christmas cruise. 

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

Juggalo Cruise

 

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Ellen Stagg Book Release Party – 11.30.23

Last week I went back to the Super Funland bar at the Museum of Sex to photograph my friend Ellen Stagg’s party to celebrate the release of her new book Free To Be Naked. I’ve known Ellen about 15 years and we’ve photographed so many of the same models despite having very different photographic styles and I am a big fan of her and her work. Fortunately Ellen must be a fan of my photography too because she keeps hiring me to photograph her parties (and used one of my photos of her for her author photo in the book). I photographed her last book release in the basement of the Museum of Sex, and just recently I photographed a signing she did for a Hustler Magazine cover, also at Super Funland. 

Super Funland is a great place for a party, at least from a photography standpoint because it’s insane looking. There’s a slide that starts upstairs in the museum and comes out a giant butt in the bar, which means randomly throughout the party museum goers just end up in the bar. There are also a few carnival games including a Zoltar that has been replaced with Rupaul, a very cool looking bar and of course a stripper pole. Ellen had two dancers going throughout the night, Ruby Quinn, who I met at Ellen’s last party, and Tess Artiste. They both absolutely killed it.

Also important to mention is that my friend Sucklord made a bootleg Ellen action figure! It was the release party for that thing as well and it’s pretty hilarious. Sucklord and started to work on a toy once but I kinda dropped the ball on it. I do still have the prototype and it’s a prized possession. I keep it on a shelf in my office. 

But yeah, it was a great time, met some rad people, saw some old friends and took a bunch of cool pictures. Thanks a ton to Ellen for having me out, and congrats on the new book! 

PS. While these photos are mostly safe for work, there are six images that I felt were gonna get me in trouble with Flickr if I uploaded them, so if you want to see every photo in this gallery the full set is available on Girls of Driven By Boredom. It is absolutely not worth paying for Girls of DBB for these six images, but there are tens of thousands of nudes on there for very little money. Just saying. 

Now click here to see (almost) all the photos from Ellen Stagg’s Free To Be Naked book release party at Super Funland at the Museum of Sex.

Ellen Stagg Free To Be Naked Book Release Party

Ellen Stagg Free To Be Naked Book Release Party

Ellen Stagg Free To Be Naked Book Release Party

Ellen Stagg Free To Be Naked Book Release Party

Ellen Stagg Free To Be Naked Book Release Party

 

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2023 Sturgis Buffalo Chip Part One

For years my favorite client was Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. We did so many events together and in the early 2010s it felt like I was going to some music festival or tattoo convention for them every other weekend. Times and budgets changed and that stuff slowed down but I was still working with them semi regularly until the pandemic canceled events and then I had my back injury and couldn’t really do any big events. A few months ago I reached back out to them and let them know my back was doing better and was down to work again and it wasn’t long before they reached out with the idea of me going to the infamous Sturgis Bike Week. That’s been on my bucket list for a long time so of course I said yes. 

Sturgis is both a city in South Dakota and a shorthand for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which is now in its 83rd year. It is synonymous for absolute chaos as hundreds of thousands of bikers descend on the area for ten days of scenic rides and total mayhem. Sailor Jerry was sponsoring the events at the Buffalo Chip campground who has been hosting thousands of bikers every year since 1981. They offer a place to camp, several bars, a swimming hole and live music every night. I got to spend three days in an RV right behind the amphitheater, mostly taking photos of Sailor Jerry related stuff, but I got to roam a bit too and I got some pretty fun pictures in the process. 

I have over 400 photos to share with you guys so I broke my three days into two halves. I didn’t shoot a ton on day one, so Part One is days one and two and then Part Two is the final day which was honestly my favorite, but mostly because I got to fly in a helicopter which is something I’ve never done before. More on that later… 

I booked my flight super last minute and so it would have been $2000 to fly in on Sunday  and the flight would leave at 6am which means I would have to wake up at 3am and since I usually go to bed around 2 that didn’t seem like an ideal situation. So I looked up flights the day before and they were significantly cheaper, but after getting a hotel and a far too expensive rental car, it was basically break even. But flying in a day early meant I would be well rested and I could check out Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood and some of that kinda stuff. I took the 6am Saturday flight and when I got to my layover they offered me $600 to stay. It was raining in SD and so my sightseeing options were limited so I accepted and spent six hours in the Minneapolis airport. I figured I could nap but I completely failed and by the time I got to my hotel I was absolutely broken. Still, the rain was breaking a little bit and I was only five minutes away from Mt. Rushmore so I went and spent $10 to look at some stone heads for about 5 minutes. Honestly it was far less impressive than the World’s Largest Wooden Bigfoot that happened to be across the street from my hotel. I went back to the hotel, walked around Keystone, SD for a few minutes, got some tacos, hit the pool and finally went to sleep well rested for Sturgis the next day.

The first day at Buffalo Chip was mostly getting settled. We got there a bit late because sadly there was an accident and the road getting in was backed up. Jason from Sailor Jerry picked me up and we did some grocery shopping and waited for the road to clear. Once we got there we had to get passes and deal with a few other things and then we got a tour of the place and checked out the Motorcycle As Art gallery. Buffalo Chip is huge and wasn’t really walkable but we had golf carts and mini bikes to use. Fortunately the stage and the Sailor Jerry sponsored bar was super close to our campsite so I mostly just walked everywhere. I spent an hour or two that day on my own. I walked past “Bikini Beach” where they were having an “air sex” competition which was pretty much like air guitar but for fucking. Apparently they had weird stuff like that all day there, which felt real Gathering of the Juggalos to me, but I was of course working for a corporate client so I just took a couple photos and moved on. That night the country singer Tommy Howell, formerly the actor C. Thomas Howell, performed and he was actually pretty good. I don’t really know why he changed his name though because he talked about how he was in the Outsiders between nearly every song. Finally the night ended with Lynyrd Skynyrd headlining. I mean the night didn’t actually end, there was a strip club afters thing and Bikini Beach and some of the bars were apparently popping, but I was off the clock so I went to bed. If I was covering this as a journalist I certainly would have stayed out a bit, but I had long days and I was happy to take it easy.

Day two we got to go out to Deadwood which I was psyched about because I didn’t get to go on Saturday. We brought with us four members of the International Bikini Team which is apparently a real thing. These girls basically served as promotional models for a bunch of different brands throughout the event so they would be working for Sailor Jerry one day and then Monster Energy the next or something like that. They also competed in a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night and also bartened and did a bikini bike wash. I just hope they got paid well because those girls were hustling. I would honestly watch a documentary about them. 

Anyway, in Deadwood I mostly just photographed them handing out Sailor Jerry swag to people. Not the most exciting thing but it was fun to watch everyone’s reaction to them. We did a mini photoshoot on the stage they had set up for the Legend’s Ride and then a bunch of people came up and took photos with them since we had accidentally set up a photo booth. After that we got lunch and then made our way back to Buffalo Chip. We had planned on stopping in Sturgis on the way back but we were all exhausted. After a quick nap it was back to photographing bands. Leilani Kilgore opened and then Lita Ford played. I had such a crush on Lita Ford when I was like 14 and honestly she’s still kinda a babe in her 60s. 

The night was headlined by Limp Bizkit. Seriously. While Fred Durst is super goofy and I never liked their music back in the day, I actually really enjoyed their set. The combination of nostalgia mixed with the reactions from the crowd made it a lot of fun. Plus my strongest Limp Bizkit memory is their Woodstock 99 performance so I was just waiting for bikers to just start setting shit on fire. It didn’t happen, probably because the average age of the crowd was 65, but we still had a good time. 

So yeah, that’s the end of Part One. I will be back soon with the final day of the trip. I should also mention that while I didn’t really shoot any super NSFW photos, there are a few that I felt were a little to risque for Flicker so I threw them up on Girls of DBB. That site has thousands of my nude photos from over the years and is totally worth the money, but don’t sign up for it just to see the few NSFW shots from Sturgis because it’s not much. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Now go look at some photos. And thanks again to Sailor Jerry for having me out!

Click here to see all my photos from day one and two of my 2023 Sturgis Buffalo Chip adventure.

Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Limp Bizkit @ Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Lynyrd Skynyrd @ Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Sturgis Buffalo Chip

Sturgis Buffalo Chip

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2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos – Part Two

After absolutely killing myself on day two of the Gathering I tried to take it easy a bit on day three. I went out to lunch with a friend who lives in Columbus, Ohio and got down there around 6pm. My back was killing me so I just sort of sat on a rock for a minute, chugged an energy drink and began the day. 

Most of the stuff I have to say about day three is about the bands that played, but we will get to all that in the next update. I will also talk later about the insane Queen of the Cheeks event aka the butthole contest, which absolutely broke me, but in the meantime I uploaded all that VERY NSFW content to Girls of Driven By Boredom. You have been warned. Other than that, I just did the normal thing, walked around and photographed juggalos. I did have a good conversation with April O’Neil’s boyfriend who was there working. April is one of my favorite humans and it was great to meet her partner. Also shout out to Wicked Clowns Harm Reduction who gave me Narcan to keep on me during the event and were helping people test their drugs. I did an article for Vice about harm reduction at the Gathering years ago, and it’s great to see a new group continue the practice. 

Day four was not a very productive day photographically, but I did a lot of work. I finally came up with an idea for my Daily Beast article and I interviewed Sean Barrett aka Uncle Juff and Psychopathic Record’s artist Ouija Macc for the article. After that I walked around and tried to look for young hip looking juggalos to interview for the article about Gen Z. It was a ton of work, but I hope people enjoyed the article. I was proud of it. 

The last day also featured a pretty tame Miss Juggalette Pageant which I will talk about later and of course a bunch of bands. I should at least mention ICP’s set because I got completely soaked and my Gathering ended when I had to run to the car when it started pouring rain. It cleaned the Faygo off me a bit, but had the potential to mess up my camera gear and I had already thrown away my poncho. 

Last thing I want to say, is that I minted five new Juggalo NFTs. My plan is to do 17 drops and this was drop number 14 so not too many to go. I know people don’t love NFTs but I thought it would be a good way to raise money for a future juggalo book. It hasn’t really ended up that way, but I still love putting out these things, and I think it’s a good record. Also I have been able to send some juggalos some money in the process which is always nice. In fact, while I was at the Gathering I saw someone who I had sold and NFT of and had no way of contacting. I ran over to him and just gave him all the cash that was in my wallet. He was psyched about it and it felt great to be able to do that. So if for some reason, you are still into NFTs and want to buy one you are supporting me and hopefully getting some juggalos paid. If nothing else, it is a good overview of my 14 years photographing juggalos… and you can always right click save. 

Now click here to see all the photos from day three and four of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH. 

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Uncle Juff & Clownvis

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Me.

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

 

 

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2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos – Part One

Whoop whoop, motherfackos! Once again I journeyed to Ohio to photograph my favorite insane clowns at the Gathering of the Juggalos. I have been documenting this event every year since 2010 and I am afraid I can never stop. I was legitimately bummed to leave. Good news is that I returned with over 900 photos for you guys. 

We will be breaking this down into four posts, probably one a day. Today we are dropping Part One, which includes the first two days of the Gathering minus the bands and events. Part Two will feature days three and four, again, minus the bands and events. Then we will have an all music post and finally the NSFW events post which will mostly just be links to my paysite Girls of Driven By Boredom because we are living in a new era where I gotta make you pay incredibly reasonable prices to see naked juggalettes. Sorry but blame FOTA/SESTA and the cowardice of corporations who host images on the internet, not me. (Ps. There are already some juggalette wet t-shirt photos on there right now.)

But before we get to all that I gotta link some stuff for you guys. First is my article about Gen Z juggalos, who I decided to called Zuggalos even though Zuggalos are already a thing but no one outside of juggalos have ever heard of Zug Izland so like, I am still gonna try and make that a thing. Seriously though, I am super proud of this article. I did actual interviews including ones with Psychopathic Records artist Ouija Macc and comedian Sean Barrett. Please go check it out.

I also did, as I do every year, a HUGE gallery for Brooklyn Vegan. Seriously I think I sent them two hundred photos, including some NSFW ones. I even snuck in a photo of me wearing a clown nose because that seemed hilarious to me. Okay, now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about the first two days of the Gathering!

The day the Gathering started I woke up in North Carolina where my girlfriend was visiting friends for the 4th of July. I had a flight that put me in kinda late but there aren’t any direct flights from Wilmington to Columbus, OH. Problem is my first flight got delayed and I nearly missed my connecting flight. I had to sprint to the gate and made it just in time. I was worried my bag wouldn’t make it but fortunately that flight also got delayed and I made. I spent way too long getting my rental car because there was only one person working for four different rental companies because they are all one rental company because monopolies love giving us the illusion of choice. I finally got to my hotel around 8:30 and I got all my shit together as quickly as possible and ran out the door. When I got to the Gathering I wasn’t on the press list for some reason. Apparently I was on ICP’s publicist list, but not the Gathering list and the person working the night shift had no idea about the other list. I started emailing their publicist while also texting juggalos and about an hour later both the person who was in charge of the list showed up at the exact same time the person in charge of the media showed up and I got in.

At this point it is 10pm and I realize I left my camera battery in the hotel. I could run back and it would only take me about 30 min or I could say fuck it and just go look around, shoot a few photos with my 35mm camera and start again tomorrow. That’s what I decided to do, however I mentioned all this to my photographer friend Nik and he found another photographer who had a battery that worked with my camera and by 11pm I had a working camera. So shout out to both of those guys. I should have just gone home and rested up for the next day but I felt like I had to shoot something since I had my camera so I went over to the Juggalesque juggalette burlesque show and shot a few minutes of that and then walked around said hi to some old friends and then finally called it a night around 1am. I didn’t shoot much, but at least I got something. 

Day two was much more productive, in fact it was by far my most productive day. I got down there just in time to shoot the absolutely insane Juggalette Wet T-shirt contest (see all the NSFW pics here) but more on that later. I spent the next hour or so just shooting juggalo portraits and waiting for the bands to start (again, more on that later) and then shot a ton of portraits in between the bands. I shot more than 1500 pictures on just that one day. ICP played their first set that night so I ended up quite sticky and wet, but I am down with the clown and that gives me the powers to just ignore how gross everything is and have fun anyway. I ended up leaving around 1:30am which is about as late as I can handle as a middle aged man, but I was (kinda) ready to do it all over again the next day.

Click here to see all the photos from Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Ps. I know everyone thinks NFTs are dead but I still have juggalo NFTs and will be releasing 5 new ones this week!

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos

 

 

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