Not sure if you noticed but my life has changed significantly in the last few years. I am injured and wifed up and spending more of my time looking back at old images than making new ones. Don’t worry, I got plenty more to shoot, but I am not exactly upset with my new middle aged life. That’s why instead of bringing you some crazy Halloween party photos, I got some photos of pumpkins carved into art taken in upstate New York where I went with my girlfriend so we could drink hot apple cider and eat apple cider donuts and buy a new magnet to add to our fridge. It was great. 

I actually had no idea what we were going to see. My girlfriend just told me to bring my camera, so I did and now because of it, you guys get to see a bunch of photo of pumpkins. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze happens every year in the Hudson Valley in upstate NY at Van Cortlandt Manor. It’s about an hour from us in Brooklyn. It’s honestly insane what they can do with pumpkins. A bunch of stuff was carved into fake pumpkins that I am guessing they reuse from year to year but my girlfriend went a few years ago and she said most of it was different. A lot of the pumpkins are real though and were barely showing signs of age. It’s all very impressive. I particularly enjoyed the MoPA (Museum of Pumpkin Art) where they had art by Koons and Calder and Warhol and many more made out of pumpkins.

This is a pretty quick update, but wanted to drop a few links on you. First of all, I have started a new Instagram account. I told you I was looking back at old images, it’s because I started @VintageDBB, a selection of my party photos from 2006-2012. Most of the stuff I am posting right now is from 2007 but I am working my way forward. I post several times a day. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I had to do a new Juggalo NFT drop for Halloween since spooky season is year around for psychopathic clowns. Okay, that’s it. On to the photos!

Click here to see my photos from the 2022 Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor.

I realize that two Miami Dolphins themed updates in a row is not what you are looking for from me, but it’s just a coincidence. Our video from our event last year came out like 10 months late and now I have new photos from you from last weekend so here we are with back to back posts about Dolfans NYC, the charity I helped found around watching football games. 

The main event of the year is the #MetLifeTakeover, a gathering of Dolphins fans centered around the Dolphins annual trip to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to play the Jets. We do a party the night before the game and then we throw a huge tailgate party and we organize big blocks of seats so everyone can watch the game together. This year we had our biggest year yet with over 1400 people sitting together. 

During the two day event we did a series of raffles and fundraisers and ended up raising close to $7000 for charity and that doesn’t include the money we make off the event and the merch we sell. This year we have already donated over $10,000 to different causes. It’s honestly one of my favorite things I do if life, even if the Dolphins cause me so much pain. 

I don’t need to go on an on about this but you can look at some photos if you want. I still haven’t fixed my site because I don’t know how to fix it so we are stuck with Flickr, and since I already put these on the Dolfans NYC Flickr I am just gonna link to that gallery. 

These pictures aren’t my finest work because I was throwing a massive event while I was taking them, and just shot some stuff here and there, but it’s still pretty exciting to see how many people showed up to a tailgate in New Jersey.

Click here to see the photos from the 2022 #MetLifeTakeover.

I haven’t updated this site in a minute and I figured it was time to do that. I don’t know how much I have talked about my girlfriend moving in and me moving to a new studio but it’s consumed my whole life and when you add into that my back injury and physical therapy and a few trips to visit my family, I don’t have a lot of content to give you guys. Good news is that once this office is up and running I hope to get a lot more done and be way more productive. 

That’s not to say I haven’t been shooting and planning. I am working on a project that is going to span 15 years of my career and include a ton of new work as well. I have shot about 10 rolls of film for it and I have a lot more planned. The project will be released as a web3/NFT situation, but it isn’t about using that to make money, it’s about using the technology to organize and preserve work in an interesting way. I don’t want to say too much about it, but you won’t have to care anything about web3 to enjoy it. The blockchain is just the medium. But yeah, not really important because it’s a long way away but I just wanted you to know that I am working on something significant.  I am also have a new zine in the works, but it’s been in the works since like 2019 and still isn’t out so it’s probably not worth mentioning. 

If you do want to get a sneak peak at the new project you can sponsor a roll of film and see one of the rolls I have shot recently before anyone else and get a print of your favorite shot on the roll. 

Lastly I gotta mention the thing that’s taking up a ton of my time right now and that’s the Miami Dolphins. I know, I know. But seriously they are actually maybe good this year?  As you may know, I co-run Dolfans NYC the NYC Dolphins fan club and we throw this massive event every year when the Jets play the Dolphins in New Jersey and we raise thousands for charity in the process. It’s pretty amazing. This year we have sold nearly 1300 tickets to the game, all sitting together, surpassing our record for most people ever. 

We finally put together a recap video from last year, and I always share them with you guys, so I figured I would do the same for this one, but I just wanted to update you guys a little on everything that was going on since most of you don’t care about the Dolphins. Still, I think the video is worth a watch. Enjoy!

I can’t believe this is my final Gathering of the Juggalos post this year. I don’t know what you guys are going to do with your lives now, but I am sure we can figure it out together. The last day my back was really killing me and I had a friend show up so it was my least productive day at the festival but I still have 100 photos for you and we can do a little wrap up of all my content from my 12th trip to Juggalo Island.

I got down to the Legend Valley campgrounds in the middle of the afternoon, but I spent probably my first hour there just sitting on a rock. I really pushed myself the day before and my back was really hurting. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it. One of the other photographers came by and told me the Miss Juggalette pageant was happening in a few minutes and as much as I hate shooting in that tent, it seemed like something I could do without standing up. I didn’t shoot a ton of it, I got there late and I left early, but the stuff I did see will haunt me forever. The talent contest involved everything from spoken word poetry to gymnastics to putting safety pins on their vagina to making themselves squirt on the stage with an umbrella to singing and riding a unicycle. A well rounded bunch for sure. Also one of my favorite parts was the juggalette who did the poetry decided to cover herself in ranch dressing during the swimwear competition. The photos are WAY too NSFW to post on here so you can see them all on Girls of Driven By Boredom. I posted a few here for free so you can get a little taste, but yeah you need to check that site for the crazy ones. There’s a couple video clips on my OnlyFans as well. 

After the Miss Juggalette contest I met up with my friend Roach who was in town. I hadn’t seen her in a minute and it’s always great to hang out with people when they experience the insanity of the Gathering for the first time so I walked around with her and her friend and they immediately got into some weird shit and I found out Ro gave herself an ICP tattoo so I feel like they were doing the Gathering right, even though they only came for one day. I am sure they will be back. They ended up going to the haunted house thing, so I went over to the hot dog eating contest, which I honestly should have competed in. I have won many an eating challenge in my day and the ICP hot dog themed hockey jersey they gave out for first place was incredible. I deserved that. 

By that time it was main stage music time and I ran over to catch Slick Rick. I listened to a TON of Slick Rick when I was in high school and I was really excited to see him. I have seen so many old school rappers at the Gathering and it’s honestly one of my favorite parts. That being said, Slick Rick gave one of the laziest performances I have ever seen. He barely moved and just looked so bored. He had a big throne he sat on which was kinda great and he’s Slick Rick so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. At some point juggalos started throwing things at him and he actually got really into it towards the end of his set. I think the measure of a man is how he acts when a half full can of Faygo goes flying past his head and Rick The Ruler passed that test. Also I should cut him some slack because there was some sound difficulties which brings me to KRS ONE. 

KRS is one of my favorite musicians of all time. I have seen him close to 10 times live and it’s always amazing. He rocked it as hard as the first time I saw him more than  twenty years ago. Even his sound check freestyle was incredible. Once I saw him freestyle for 30 minutes while he was selling t-shirts in his booth after the show. He just never stopped. Eventually I just had to leave because the DC Metro stops running at midnight. He’s really one of the best live performers ever. His set at the Gathering really had some sound issues though, and it impacted everything, but KRS has been doing this shit for 40 years and handled it really well. It’s just a bummer they couldn’t get it figured out. If you get a chance to see KRS ONE, do it. 

Finally it was time for the Insane Clown Posse. They did a deep cuts set on the first night but I didn’t make it in time for that. They always end the festival and it’s always a blast. I have seen them so many times and it’s still so much fun to shoot them even if I end up covered in diet Faygo. They are the hardest band to photograph, but the easiest band to get lucky with a great shot. They are another artist that you should see once in your life even if you don’t like their music. It’s just an insane experience. They are semi retired because Violent J has heart problems, and I think not playing was good for them. They looked legitimately happy to be out there which has not always been the case even when they put on a good show. For some reason they didn’t kick us out of the pit after three songs so I actually got to shoot until I got really soaked and decided I should leave because I didn’t have another pair of pants (I’ve lost 30 lbs in the last three months and none of my old pants fit me). So because I got to shoot more than three songs there are more ICP shots than I normally have. There are also a couple shots of Taji Ameen getting sprayed who was filming his show Better Man for Vice. I am very excited to see that episode.

Okay so yeah, that is the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos. I ended up doing okay despite my back injury. Maybe I didn’t get as many shots as in the past, but this was the first year in a while that I went by myself so I think that helped me be a bit more productive during a shorter window of time. I got some shots I am very happy with (five of which are already for sale as NFTs) and I didn’t do any permanent damage to myself (I hope). To see everything I shot you are going to need to go to a few different sites but all the links are below. And to see all my Gathering content over the last decade plus you can click here to see every post tagged with Gathering of the Juggalos. 

• The Daily Beast
• Brooklyn Vegan
• Driven By Boredom Part 1
• Driven By Boredom Part 2
• Girls Of DBB
• OnlyFans
• Juggalo NFTs

And now for the final chapter of 2022….

Click here to see all the photos from Day 4 of the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio. 

My second day at the Gathering of the Juggalos was my longest of the four day festival. As I mentioned in Part 1 yesterday, I actually skipped Wednesday and only spent about 4 hours there on Thursday, but on Friday I was there from about 3pm to about 2am. The heat combined with my back injury made it seem even longer. But at least I took a lot of photos. 

When I got down there I walked over to the tent where the Faygo Wet T-shirt contest was happening. That tent is a red abomination of heat, moisture and horrifying color balance so I usually try and avoid anything happening in there. However the Faygo wet t-shirt contest is always absolutely chaotic and has been hosted by my buddy Clownvis the last couple of years so I figured I would deal with the heat and then just make all the photos black and white which is the easy way out of color balance hell. Taji Ameen from Vice was there filming a series called Better Man which I had just watched several episodes of. It was a very weird coincidence. Like literally three days earlier I had gone down a YouTube hole so I made sure I got some good shots of him looking uncomfortable while juggalettes showed their Faygo drenched buttholes to the crowd. Honestly the photos are totally insane but you can only see them on Girls of Driven By Boredom because I still haven’t fixed my gallery system yet. There’s some video from it on my OnlyFans too.  Just give me $4.99 and we can all move on with our lives. 

After the Faygo contest there was some sort of stunt show happening in that tent but I had no interest in taking any more photos in there so I did a lap around the campgrounds. When I made my way back around I heard screaming from the tent and went inside to see some total madness happening including Super Humman doing one of his famous stunts. I just caught the very end though and suddenly everyone went outside for a car stunt. The stunt group and brought a car to destroy and I believe the plan was to have Taji drive the car down a path and aim for a ladder, and a guy standing on the ladder would jump over the car. I can only speculate because while they were setting up one of the security guards started yelling for people to get off the port-a-potties they were standing on to get a better view. The juggalos didn’t appreciate getting yelled at so they did what juggalos do best and threw some Faygo at the security guard, she freaked out and radioed for the police. They showed up and the whole thing turned into a really ugly scene and the cops were totally outnumbered. I thought one of them was gonna do something stupid and things were gonna go really badly, but luckily they didn’t and Violent J’s brother Jumpsteady showed up and got everyone to calm down. That’s when I left to do another lap.

When I came back around the car was flipped over and juggalos were standing on top of it. It had become quite the party around that and at some point someone was selling merch off it The whole thing was honestly pretty fun, unlike in 2012 when someone who got caught stealing had their car destroyed. Eventually the owner of the campgrounds came by with some sort of heavy machinery and took the car away while all the juggalos followed him like the juggalo pied piper. A situation that seemed pretty dark turned out totally fine in the end. Juggalos usually do a pretty good job of policing themselves and glad the cops didn’t intervene more than they did. 

After that we did some more running around until the mainstage music really kicked off. Sir-Mix-A-Lot was the first artist we were aloud to get into the photo pit before and I was pretty psyched about that. After I mentioned his performance he actually Tweeted at me telling me how much fun he had and I think everyone really enjoyed his set.

By the time he was done my friends in Ho99o9 had shown up. The last time the played the Gathering I followed them around for a Vice story. This time they had experienced the Gathering already and were mostly just focused on the show. I went over and just hung out with them while they were sound checking and stuff until I heard Ouji Macc on the main stage. I don’t really listen to any juggalo music except when a random ICP song will pop into my head, but I really like Ouji as a human, his shows are a lot of fun and his managers are friends of mine. He also gave me a pair of his record label’s (Chapter 17) socks which I think I am actually going to wear today. So when I heard him start playing I ran down to the main stage and got there just in time to shoot one of his songs before they kicked us out of the pit.

As soon as Ouji’s was over Ho99o9 launched into their set. They absolutely killed it as always. I have seen them more than a half dozen times, but not in five years or something. They are more polished, and even creepier, but as energetic as always and it was great to see them again. After I went backstage and shot them and Ouji together and then said hi to Dana Dentata who I briefly met at the Gathering in 2019. Esham was playing between Ho99o9 and Dentata and that dude is an absolute legend. He invented horrorcore and Eminem, ICP and everything that came after them wouldn’t exist without him. Finally Dana Dentata went on and I was only going to shoot one song but her set was incredibly interesting and I couldn’t find a reason to leave. Finally when she was over I escaped into the night and got back to my hotel after 3am. I was in an incredible amount of pain and honestly my photos on Saturday suffered because of it, but I had shot a ton of photos and had some fun and it was probably all worth it. 

Click here to see my photos from day 3 of the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos and come back soon for the final chapter. 

Ps. Buy my juggalo NFTs.

In 2010 I Tweeted “Who wants to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos with me?” My editor at the Village Voice* responded and we ended up doing a cover story that changed both of our lives forever. Over a decade later I returned to my 12th Gathering of the Juggalos ready to shoot some more photos of my favorite insane clowns. This year I was hired to cover the festival by The Daily Beast and Brooklyn Vegan so before you read  the rest of this post, check those links out. 

I pretty much start off every post these days talking about my back injury, but this time it’s especially relevant. I hurt it one year ago at the Gathering of the Juggalos. This year I had no idea how I was going to make it through the festival but I had a plan. I would skip the first day (that’s why this update is Part 1, not Day 1) and I would only spend a few hours at the Gathering each day to rest my back. I almost didn’t make it, day 3 almost killed me, but I shot enough photos just on day 1 to make the trip worth it. 

I landed in Columbus Ohio around 1:30pm on Thursday, grabbed my rental car and headed to my hotel. By 3:30 I was headed to Thornville, Ohio and after getting my credentials I was on Juggalo Island by 4. One of the first photos I shot was maybe the best photo of the whole weekend and I despite being down there for only a few hours, I think I might have shot my best stuff on the first day. 

I mostly just shot a bunch of juggalo portraits but I did shoot a handful of bands as well. The first one was Green Jellÿ. I had no idea what to expect, I remember being blown away by the Three Little Pigs video when I was a kid, but I haven’t really thought about them since. But that shit was so wild and so much fun and the photos are absolutely chaotic. Back on the main stage they weren’t letting photographers upfront until 8pm for some reason so I didn’t shoot much of the early stuff this year. I did shoot literally one photo of Cybertronic Spree who dressed as Transformers and played a bunch of weird covers. I didn’t really understand what was happening but I wasn’t mad about it. I also shot a few photos of the Clue coverband that is an inside joke that would take too long to explain it to you. They only played one song. Finally I shot Steel Panther who are a parody of a hair metal band. We have a bunch of friends in common and I have wanted to see them for years so glad I got to see it. It’s such a wild commitment to be doing this joke band for decades, but it seems like it’s a lot of fun.

After I shot Steel Panther I decided to call it a day. I was exhausted from the flight and my back hurt and I knew the next day was going to be my big one so I wanted to get some rest. ICP was playing a deep track set that night, but I knew I would shoot them again on Saturday so I figured I could skip it. I also missed a late night set by Onyx who are incredible, but I have seen them a few times before so it made sense to bounce. In the end I was only there for about 4 hours, but I still got some great shots which you get to look at right now. 

But some housekeeping notes first… I totally screwed up and I haven’t fixed the gallery system on my website. That is an incredible bummer because I am now using Flickr for these galleries and apparently nudity is now against their TOS unless you have a pro account and I am not giving Flickr $60 a year. I will get this fixed, but not this week. So because of that all the nudity is going on Girls of Driven By Boredom and my OnlyFans. I am sorry about that, I wanted to give you guys some random juggalette nudity and then just paywall the really crazy shit, but here we are. I am sorry about that. So far on Girls of DBB we have one gallery of just random toples juggalettes including some outtakes that I wouldn’t normally post. On OnlyFans I have some video from the Wet Faygo Contest and the Miss Juggalette pageant, but more on those in Parts 2 and 3. There will be a lot more content on both sites in the next few days and my sites are pretty cheap.

Speaking of you giving me money, I also uploaded 5 new juggalo NFTs from this year. There are now 55 that have been uploaded over the last year. There will be under 100 images total and they start at just .1 ETH. My other NFTs have done a lot better than these, but I love them and I am not stopping any time soon. 

Okay, now it’s time to look at some juggalo photos.

Click here to see all the photos from my first day at the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos.

*My editor at the Voice, Camille Dodero,  is featured heavily in the new Netflix true crime series The Most Hated Man on the Internet because of a Voice cover story she did on the subject of that documentary. I shot some photos for her story that also ended up in the documentary. 

When you think about parties around NFT NYC what do you think of? You probably think of a bunch of cryptobros getting drunk on bottle service and some other absurd displays of wealth. You probably don’t think about a family friendly paint party in a Greenpoint warehouse thrown by a 19 year old trans artist. Fewo World felt like a real NYC art party, that normally would have required some sort of corporate sponsor, but instead was all paid for by Victor Langlois who became a millionaire at the age of 18 selling his art digitally.

This is (I believe) the fifth Paint Party, with past events taking place last year in NYC and Miami and this year in LA and Denver. Any holder of Victor’s NFTs can attend a party and if you do attend one, you also get an NFT sent to you in return after the party. Fewocious was one of the first artists I ever collected digitally (and the first I ever sold for a profit) and after meeting him at an event last year I have just become a huge fan. Listening him talk about art is an absolutely wonderful thing to behold. He is just so nice and joyful and passionate about his art and his life. I managed to get a fairly affordable piece of his recently and was able to attend the Brooklyn paint party.

The party was one of the most fun events I have been to in a long time. People got to put on paint suits and just let loose on a bunch of canvases. When you walked in you could see the canvases from previous parties. The event happened twice during the day to spread out the people and I was in the second group so you could see the earlier party’s work on the canvases above us. 

Despite going to art school and being forced to take several painting classes, I absolutely cannot paint, but at some point I put on a rubber glove and just started putting handprints on a bunch of the canvases. I also had no intention of photographing this party, but I had no choice. I pulled out my camera thinking I was going to take a handful of photos but I just kept shooting it and before you know I was shooting it like it was an event I was hired to cover. Honestly because I was having so much fun I probably shot better photos than if I was being hired to cover something. I ran into a handful of friends there too which was cool and overall just had a blast for the hour or so I was there. 

Eventually my back was hurting and I had taken all the photos I could think of and decided to escape, but not before walking through a gallery of Fewo’s fashion work, from shoes to clothing to jewelry as well as a bunch of digital displays as well. Oh, I also wanted to mention that there were a ton of kids there and while I don’t plan on ever having children I do think this would have been such an amazing event to take your kids to. Maybe one day when my nephew can walk I will get to go to one of these in the future with him. I mean it was his dad who introduced me to Fewo in the first place… Also there were free burgers from Goblintown, coffee from Richerd’s Interns and copies of the Pride issue of Billboard because Fewo did the cover design. Okay, I think that’s it. Let’s look at some photos…

Ps. My gallery plugin is still messed up so we are using Flickr galleries temporarily until I can fix my website. 

Click here to see all the photos from the Fewo World Paint Party in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

We have a lot to talk about today. Gonna try to make this post make sense for people who hate/don’t care about NFTs and for people who are deep in it, and that’s going to be tough to do, but before I do any of that and get to the photos, we need to talk about abortion. 

These photos would have been up yesterday but I didn’t think it made any sense to post party photos during an historically awful day in American history. We have become a much more progressive country in the 50 years since Roe v. Wade was decided and yet here we are being ruled by a hard right fundamentalist minority. Women should be able to make their on medical decisions and this won’t save lives, it will only kill the poorest women. If someone wants an abortion, they will get one. Well off people will just travel to blue states while the poorest most vulnerable women will be forced to risk their own life to terminate their pregnancy. It’s a fucking nightmare. I donated to two things yesterday and I invite you to do the same. The first is a fund that goes to 92 different organizations, just make sure that if you donate that your phone number is not saved with ActBlue because you do not want hundreds of fundraising texts. The second is Brigid Alliance which does direct action to help women get abortions. They get money to travel and even childcare to look after their kids while they are away. They have a perfect rating from Charity Navigator as well. If you are here for NFTs, I am donating 100% of the profits from this photo to Brigid. 

Now, moving on. Let’s talk about Bored Apes. 

I have very mixed opinions about the Bored Ape Yacht Club and it’s hard to write about this to an audience that has such a wide mix of knowledge/views about what BAYC even is, but I am going to try. Let’s start with the basics. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 NFTs that are made up of randomly generated traits, giving them different levels of rarity and value. They have become one of the most valuable, and definitely the most recognizable NFT collection, and they have birthed several other collections as well. Because of this popularity and massive value, BAYC has become a symbol for everything people hate about NFTs. They see rich crypto bros with stupid monkey jpgs as status symbols and they think the art sucks and they don’t get it and they write off all NFTs as garbage. And the thing is, they aren’t completely wrong. 

I also don’t blame BAYC for this. There are so many garbage NFT projects that have all followed behind BYAC trying to copy their model and have caused so many people to blow so much money chasing the next BYAC. It sucks and PFPs (profile pictures or picture for proof) have made web3 a joke. It’s such a bummer as an artist just trying to make a living with this exciting new technology and people bring up apes and just write the whole thing off. 

And yes, there are a lot of awful people who own Apes. The level of privilege to own a $100k jpg and not sell it is astronomical, but I know many people who have had their lives absolutely changed by these things. They bought them cheap and either sold them for life changing money, or held on to them for the rewards which have also been life changing.  I ran into someone who I knew 15 years ago and he was able to show his artwork in a gallery all because he was given tens of thousands of dollars of “Ape Coin” just for holding on to his ape. 

Okay, so now we need to talk about the claims of racism. There is a professional troll named Ryder Ripps trying to destroy BAYC. I know Ryder a little bit and I actually think he’s pretty interesting as far as an artist. He’s been ripping off NFT collections and changing them a little bit to have a conversation about ownership and copyright and to make some money and PR out of it. I guess you could say he’s the web3 Richard Prince and I am sure both his supporters and detractors would probably enjoy that comparison. He put together a video that went viral recently that was basically a Q Anon video for NFTs claiming that BAYC is a white supremacist organization. It’s really silly and BAYC did a good job of refuting it, and I am sure even Ryder knows it’s all nonsense, but a good troll never admits the troll. They’ve also sued Ryder which is exactly what he wanted and his RR BAYC collection has been skyrocketing in value. 

So no, BYAC is not a secret racist organization, but I do think there is something a little problematic with anthropomorphizing apes, especially when you have traits that are generally associated with black culture. When I first saw BYAC I almost minted one, just because of the Driven By Boredom association, but two things kept me away, the fact that I had just lost some of the first ETH I ever made on a 10k project, and because I thought the apes with grills thing was a little gross. I clearly regret this decision and while I still think Apes are a little corny, the community around them is very impressive and nearly everything Yuga Labs has done as a company has been impressive. 

Which finally brings me to Ape Fest. 

Ape Fest is a festival that takes place around NFT NYC. This is the second one and the first one since the line for Ape Fest 2021 went viral for having a bunch of white dudes making ape noises in line. This year they made the very smart decision to allow plus ones (which is how I got in) and there were a lot more women, and even some non-white people there. A revelation. Web3 clearly skews towards a certain demographic but there are a lot of people trying to fix that and NFT NYC did feel a lot less broy compared to last year. 

I went to Day 4 of the fest, which takes place at Pier 17, down in by the water in the financial district. They had a massive inflatable ape at the entrance and a pirate ship just hanging out with BAYC sails. The party itself was on the roof of a building but the massive amount of money they spent on the surrounding area was not unnoticed. 

The event was pretty impressive and well run and the acts were pretty impressive. There were a lot of real goofy motherfuckers around, but everyone was super nice. As much as I would like to make fun of it, I really did appreciate the invite from one of my NFT collectors who goes by Freecard. He’s a great dude and it was a real experience. 

The party started with an NFT themed rapper named Spottie WiFi. I honestly expected him to look like his Crypto Punk since that’s how I know him. I am not sure his music is for me, but I have been in Spaces and Discords with him and he seems like a good dude. It was very cool to see him perform on this huge stage in front of his people. 

After that Lil Wayne performed and as much as I used to love him, I am not sure that getting the rapper most associated with the MAGA movement is an ideal way to let people know that you aren’t a secret white supremacist group. I still like a ton of his music though so it was at least enjoyable. Towards the end of his set my hurt back started killing me so I sat down and then someone managed to drop an entire whiskey drink on my from above. So that was fun..

After that Snoop came out with Eminem and they debuted their new song which isn’t about NFTs, but features the Apes that they each own. It’s actually a pretty good song & video and the comments on it make me feel that most people don’t even know what BAYC is. Eminem didn’t perform but Snoop did. He mostly was just DJing but he rapped some too. He had a song about Ape Coin which was a little cringe, but otherwise it was pretty fun. I think I’ve seen Snoop 4 times now and you can’t go wrong with that. That being said, he did have a couple strippers on stage with him, and despite most of my friends being strippers or former strippers, I still think it’s kinda a bad look for BAYC when they are trying to let people know they aren’t just a bunch of pale dudes. 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly outside of the whole Handmaid’s Tale situation, is that I didn’t shoot this like it was an event. I didn’t have press access so I didn’t shoot any of the music except a couple wide shots. I didn’t bring my flash so once it got dark I didn’t really shoot. I really just took my camera out because I didn’t want to carry it on my back anymore. My spine is completely fucked so it’s much less painful to hold my camera than carry it on my back. I also was rocking a terrible plastic lens because it’s way lighter than my normal one. So yeah, there aren’t many photos. I took a few of people I met, and some photos of people taking photos because I am working on a phone themed zine. I took some photos of a limbo contest but it was pretty dark at that point and a few other shots randomly here and there. It’s not great coverage of the event, but it did give me a chance to write this 1600 word article about all this stuff.

So TL;DR, abortion should be a woman’s choice, NFTs aren’t all animal jpgs, BAYC is a little bit corny and a little bit problematic, but they have changed lives, have done a lot of great stuff and threw some amazing events. 

Now click here to see a couple dozen photos from Day 4 of Ape Fest 2022 at Pier 17.

Ps. Something is fucked up with my gallery system because my website is archaic, so until I fix it I am using a Flickr gallery like it’s 2007. 

A couple of months ago Jade Baker was in NYC and hit me up about taking some photos. Obviously I was down since the previous times we have taken photos have been really great. The only problem is, my back is endlessly fucked and I was between the giant injections I get in my spine so that I can walk.

Because I couldn’t move, she came over to my apartment. It was in the evening so there was no natural light and honestly I don’t really have any place to shoot so we just took some photos on a white wall. Jade is hot so it’s fine, but they weren’t that great. I figured I could salvage it using the harsh flash on my 35mm SLR and shooting some black and white photos since black and white is cheating and even ugly light looks good. Unfortunately the 20+ year old SLR broke and all the film got exposed to light and the black and white film got fucked up because I am an idiot. This is the price you pay when shooting film, and I have had many rolls ruined over the year, but never twice in the same week. Like that is just insanely bad luck.

We did have some good luck though which is that I recently got another spine shot (it’s actually three shots) and then I went to Miami for 24 hours to see my Caps lose to the Florida Panthers in the playoffs and my flight got in about six hours before I had to be at the game. Jade also just happens to live not too far from the Ft. Lauderdale airport where I flew in. I grabbed a rental car and drove straight to her place. We managed to eat at Margaritaville because I thought that would be hilarious, but it was actually terrible, and then we drove out to some sort of park on a swamp. 

For whatever reason there was no one at the park. I am not sure if it was because of how hot it was or because it was in the middle of the day or what but I think we only saw two people the whole time we were there. That allowed her just to get completely naked in the middle of the park and we shot a bunch of photos. A runner did catch us shooting, but I am pretty sure he didn’t care. It is Florida and all, I am sure he’s seen a lot crazier shit running through a swamp. 

Anyway, TL;DR is that I have not one, but TWO shoots with Jade. The inside shoot is photographically worse, but it’s actually a bigger set and is a bit more graphic, but the out door shoot is really pretty and a lot more fun. So what that mean is that you get the outdoor shoot for free, but you gotta sign up for Girls of DBB for the indoor photos. It’s a fair trade I think. There’s also a couple videos from both shoots on my OnlyFans. Listen, while I can’t walk I gotta make a living somehow. It’s either that or buy my damn NFTs. Oh, just FYI, there are a few photos from the first shoot in this gallery as a preview.

Click here to see a bunch of NSFW photos of Jade Baker in some sort of south Florida swamp!