2025 Gathering Of The Juggalos – Day 1 – 8.13.25

August 17, 2025

That’s right, we are back! The Gathering of the Juggalos celebrated their 25th anniversary and somehow I am celebrating my 15th anniversary of attending the festival. How time flies. The Gathering was packed this year and had a better lineup than the last few years since this was the “Gathering of Legends”. It was also a particularly weird one for me because I had some personal life shit going on which slightly affected my coverage, but I still shot nearly 4000 photos in four days so I don’t think you should complain too much.

But yeah things didn’t start great as my flight got delayed three times and for some reason my rental car place closed at 5:30pm so I had to spend way more than planned on a fucking rental car. By the time I got to the festival I was just super fucking grumpy and I probably took a dozen photos in the first hour I was there. Luckily I ran into a bunch of the juggalo friends I have made over the last 15 years and that really cheered me up. A lot of times I tell myself I keep going back because I don’t want to miss a year before I publish my juggalo book, but I know a huge part of it is just getting to see the same insane clowns every year.

The first musician I photographed was Lardi B who I took some pretty fun photos of last year, but since I started my website over from scratch you can’t actually see them on here, but they are probably on Brooklyn Vegan if you do some digging. (That being said, if you are looking for any of my NSFW juggalo photos they are all on my paysite Girls of DBB.) Anyway, Lardi B was pretty fun and then I got to photograph Onyx again. I photographed them several times because I fucking love Onyx. I loved them when I was 13 and I still listen to them all the time to this day. The photos I took kinda suck cause the stage lighting at the Gathering is terrible and also I am a bad photographer, but like, I had a blast.

The first night was headlined by RA The Rugged Man who I have also photographed a bunch of times. I only know a couple of his songs but we got some mutual friends and he puts on a hell of a show always. You only get to photograph the musicians for three songs at the Gathering (and most festivals) but he pulled a bunch of juggalos up on stage during his fourth song so I just went up there and shot some more photos and they ended up being some of the most fun photos of the night.

The Chapter 17 party was late night that night so I had to stick around for that because my old pal Kev Buc was DJing with Ouija Mac. I love both those guys so of course I was gonna go, but I had an hour to kill so I went over to “Juggalesque” which as you would imagine is a portmanteau of juggalo and burlesque and it is exactly what you would expect. I was too tired to put any effort into that so I just hung out backstage and took photos of the girls back there and took a couple shots from the side of the stage. It’s fine. I made it about an hour into the Chapter 17 party before I had to go to sleep but I did have a good time hanging out with that crew.

Currently I am at a Bob Evans in the Columbus Ohio Suburbs eating a salad with a pancake side because it came with bread and they let me substitute for a stack of pancakes which is absolutely reckless. I don’t know why I told you that except to let you know that I gotta go to the airport now so you get to go look at a bunch of photos now. Just a heads up some of these are mildly NSFW. I am gonna paywall all the actual nudity but maybe don’t look at these in public. Gonna try and get (almost) everything up by Wednesday because I am going on vacation and I want this off my plate so expect a lot of rapid fire posts.

Now without further ado, I present you with about 150 photos from day one of the 25th annual Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH!

Another Friday Night – 9.14.07

August 5, 2025

I’ve probably spent less than a year of my life total working you standard 9-5, Monday-Friday job. Between graduating from college and moving to NYC I did some temp work at a few offices and my last job ever before becoming a photographer was digitizing books in a library and I did that for about six months, but other than that I’ve either worked retail/food service, or been a full time photographer. So for me, a Friday night is just like any other night of the week, but back in the late 2000s, Friday night meant two things: Trash & Ruff Club.

Ruff Club, held at the Annex, was the first weekly party in NYC that I ever went to and Trash was probably my favorite weekly of all time. Back in 2007 it was held at Rififi which was by far my favorite of it’s four locations. If I was going to hit only one party that night it would be Trash, but like most nights of the week, I would hit at least two parties. I’d usually start my night at Trash and then end up walking down to the LES for Ruff so I could take the JMZ home or just walk over the bridge to Williamsburg. But Rififi was near the L train so I could always do it the other way around.

This Friday night in September wasn’t any sort of special occasion, and the photos were taken before I had a professional camera, but the night feels pretty representative of that time period. Multiple parties, multiple subcultures, a ton of friends and a bunch of time just spent hanging out in the street outside of bars. It was such a fun time in my life and also still in that full Indie Sleaze era of American Apparel and insane accessories and of course flip phones.

I went back and looked at what I had written about that night at the time and it seemed the night was kinda a bust. I sounded kinda depressed about the whole thing and not sure why. Apparently the door person at Annex tried to get me to pay $5 which instead of just paying, I apparently made it a whole thing until Sophia Lamar brought me in and then apparently I was super apologetic to the door person for making it a whole thing. (That’s three apparentlys in one sentence, are you impressed yet?) I was working at a busboy at a restaurant at that time so I am sure I could have used the $5, but mostly I think I just wanted to feel important. My site was starting to blow up and right around that time I quit my busboy job and tried to make it as a full time photographer. I only made it nine months before having to get that book scanning job, but it felt like I was really doing it. In December of 2008 after the economy collapsed I got laid off of that job and I never worked another day job again, so I guess I did make it, just not that Friday night…

2024* #MetLifeTakeover Recap Video

July 30, 2025July 30, 2025

Back in January the Miami Dolphins played the New York Jets at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey. Both teams were out of the playoffs, it was on a flex game schedule so we didn’t find out the time or date until a week before and it was one of the coldest days of the year. Because of all these factors it was the least attended #MetlifeTakeover in years… and yet we still had a great time and threw one hell of a party.

If you don’t know by now, I co-founded the largest Miami Dolphins fan club on the planet, Dolfans NYC, with my friend Michelle back in 2009. Despite both of us moving away from NYC we still run it from a far and turned our love of a football team into a non-profit organization raising six figures for charity over the years. The #MetlifeTakeover is our biggest fundraiser of the year and we have sold as many as 1400 tickets in the past and it’s become a bucketlist for Dolphins fans all over the globe.

This year we didn’t quite have 1400 people, but it was still a blast even though the game itself was absolutely miserable. The Dolphins lost which actually helped them get a slightly better draft pick and hurt the draft pick of the Jets, our most hated rival, so looking back it was a win despite it not feeling like one at the time. Because of the late season game and disappointing season we didn’t spend too much time thinking about our recap video in the offseason, but we just launched ticket sales for the 2025 #MetlifeTakeover so we of course had to finally release the video.

Shout out to Curtis of Visual Verse Media for directing, shooting and editing the entire video himself. Curtis and I have dreams of working on a documentary in the future, so hopefully that will actually happen. And of course shout out to our friend and comedian Oscar Collazos for hosting the video.

*The 2024 #MetLifeTakeover happened the last week of the season in early January so it technically happened in 2025.

Anastasiya

July 22, 2025

Last month I went out to LA for a few reasons. I had a bunch of photos in the Superchief Contagious Culture art show so the opening was what I based my flights around, but I also just wanted an excuse to go to LA, take some photos and see my brother and his kids. On top of that I started shooting for Creem Magazine and I figure I could find some musicians to photograph for that. I reached out to some LA friends for suggestions and pitched Creem on two dozen artists and I ended up photographing a yet to be named musician for their next issue. (More on that soon…)

Anyway, two of my friends mentioned the same band, Vanity Pl8 fronted by a siberian bombshell named Anastasiya who of course people told me I needed to photograph. Creem had other plans but I wanted to photograph her anyway and she was super down so on my last night in town I met up with her at the end of a dead end street near an Amazon fulfillment center on the east side of LA. She rolled up with a trunk full of outfits and props and was up for anything. We probably spent an hour shooting in this little dead end while Amazon employees whistled at her from across the street.

During the shoot I pulled out my Instax camera (I am forever working on an update to my book Instaxxx) and it just wouldn’t take a picture. It’s a brand new camera so I figured I was doing something wrong, but turns out the batteries were just mostly dead. Anastasiya told me she had a bunch of Instax film she didn’t want and if I came by on my way out of town she would give me a bunch of film and we could take a few quick instant film photos. Turns out we did a lot more than that. We only shot for about 20 minutes but we got some really great stuff that I am saving for another post. That will probably come months from now because I am bad at life.

But yeah, we did two great shoots in 24 hours and the first shoot had multiple bikini changes. Oh, I should mention that these photos aren’t nude, but they are pretty sexy. I am still going to give you all the digitals from the first shoot on here for free, but I am paywalling the 35mm stuff because I need to pay my rent. The 35mm stuff is always the best stuff so you are gonna want to sign up for Girls of Driven By Boredom. This shoot might not have any nudity but there are literally hundreds of NSFW shoots on there all for one low, low price. Act now! Buy buy buy! etc.

See all the free digital photos of Anastasiya below! Part two coming eventually!

Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest – 7.4.07

July 4, 2025

In the mid 2000s shortly before I moved to NYC my friend Adrianne was in a long distance relationship with a guy who ran a blog called “Watch Me Eat a Hotdog”. The blog was fucking hilarious and it covered all things hot dog including the Nathan’s Famous 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest and the world of competitive eating. I was kinda obsessed with the site and competitive eating. I loved an eating challenge. I had won my high school’s Homecoming pie eating contest three years in a row. I remember trying to see how many hot dogs I could eat in 10 minutes to see if I had what it takes. I ate 13 hot dogs in 12 minutes which is both impressive and also 40 less hot dogs than hot dog eating superstar Takeru Kobayashi ate that same year.

At the same time I was managing a two man dance pop band called the Gaskets who were blowing up locally but hadn’t done much outside of Richmond, VA where we all went to art school. Twice a month we were traveling up to NYC to try and change that. I started booking them shows around the 4th of July so I could actually see the hot dog eating contest in real life and I got to witness history in 2006 when Kobayashi broke his own record by one quarter of a hot dog in 2006.

In spring of 2007 The Gaskets got booked to play some small festival in the Hudson Valley. I rarely booked them daytime shows because they were always terrible, but the publisher of Blender Magazine got them the gig, so we weren’t going to say no. At this point I was living in NYC and working as a nightlife photographer while also working the 6am-3pm shift at a hotel restaurant. The only thing I wanted to do in the middle of the day was sleep. So when we got to where we were staying I took a short nap before the show, but for some reason the Gaskets just let me sleep through it. When they got back they told me the gig was terrible (as expected) but they had some good news: One of the handful people watching their set was Richard Shea, the co-founder of the IFOCE – the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

The Gaskets told Richard how obsessed their manager was with competitive eating and how I would always book them shows so I could watch the hot dog eating contest, so Richard offered us a spot to perform before the contest that year. I could not have been more excited. Not only would they get to perform in front of thousands of people at Coney Island, but I would just have amazing access to the hot dog eating contest and I could bring my camera…

I honestly barely remember The Gaskets performance that day, what I do remember is everything else. First of all they got to open for competitive eater Eric “Badlands” Booker who put out a rap album about competitive eating that I was obsessed with. I haven’t heard it in 15+ years and I am positive I could still sing along with it. Badlands goes by Badlands Chugs and his videos of him chugging massive amounts of liquid have gone super viral and he is a legit YouTube star with over 3 million followers. (He also happened to witness the second to last punk show I ever played a decade later.)

The contest itself was legendary. Kobayashi had dominated every contest he had entered until that point. His first contest in 2001 he nearly doubled the previous record. For the next six years he was blowing everyone out of the water… Until he met Joey “Jaws” Chestnut. In 2006 Chestnut came within two hot dogs of Kobayashi setting them up for a fierce head to head battle in 2007. In the qualifying round Chestnut had actually taken the world record with nearly 60 hot dogs but on July 4th Kobayashi broke that eating 63 hot dogs. That would have been the world record, if it weren’t for Chestnut eating an insane 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Kobayashi had lost and I had witnessed history.

Chestnut would go on to win the contest 16 out of the next 17 years, losing only once to Matt Stonie in 2015. Chestnut would break his record over and over again and owns the current record of 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes in 2021. Last year Chestnut didn’t compete and my friend Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti won which was incredible. Now if you are wondering how I became friends with a hot dog eating champion it’s because after taking these photos in 2007, I gave my business card to an eater named “Crazy Legs” Conti who looked at my website and quickly became a fan of my photography. One night I was at a party at Lit Lounge and I ran into him and told him I had watched a documentary about him and told him I was obsessed with competitive eating. He realized who I was and since we were mutual fans of each other we quickly became friends. Crazy Legs also happens to host the 4th of July after party every year which is how I became friends with Pat and his fellow Chicago eater Tim “Gravy” Brown.

Now it has been years since I attended a hot dog eating contest, but I still follow it every year and I have always had this dream of doing a photo project on competitive eating, going to some of the smaller regional festivals and documenting the weirdness that goes on around it. And maybe, tentatively, perhaps I might be working on doing something like that in the not so distant future.

Anyway, enjoy these photos from the day that changed competitive eating forever. It’s a real time capsule of the transition from competitive eating being a bit of a freak show, to the real sport it is today. These photos were taken on a truly terrible digital camera and the quality reflects that, but I think you can enjoy them anyway. Happy 4th of July. Eat all you can.