A Week In The Life: 2007

September 8, 2026September 8, 2026

Once again I have been slacking on Vintage Driven By Boredom posts, and once again I have a reason for it: In the hack I lost access to my archives. That means I can’t look up a specific event and remember what the hell happened that night. My memory is terrible. My visual memory is okay and I think that’s why I take photos, but I can’t remember any of the details without that archive. Fortunately a backup of it exists, but it’s just code and hard to search and until I pay someone to get it back online I am sort of without it. So I had an idea…

Instead of posting photos from a specific party and telling you all about that night, I am going to post hundreds of photos from a bunch of different, all taken in August 2007. The idea is to sort of break down the average week in my life as a party photographer back then when it was just a side hustle and I was still going out nearly every single night.

In August 2007 I had been living in NYC for about a year and Driven By Boredom was pretty popping. My camera sucked and my photos were bad, but somehow I was getting a ton of traffic and was having a ton of fun. I could pretty much get in anywhere at that point and I felt very cool, but I was still working as a busboy at a hotel restaurant. Every day I would go out around midnight, hit one or two parties, make out with some babes and party my ass off until 4am. I would take the train back to Brooklyn, dump my photos, take a shower and head back into the city so I could get to midtown before my shift started at 6am. It was pretty fucking soul crushing to work this shit job after taking off my hipster nightlife persona. About a month after I took these photos I quit and tried to make it as a full time photographer. I made it about nine months. At the end of 2008 I got laid off of my last “real job” thanks to the economic collapse and finally “made it” but in August 2007 I was sleeping a few hours a day and just absolutely grinding trying to live this fun life I eventually managed.

So let’s go through the week:

On Monday’s eventually I started going to the party M at Darkroom, but in August 2007 that was my night off. I went through a couple of months of photos from back then and I think the only time I worked on a Monday was to photograph a band.

Tuesdays were always at Happy Ending or was it Happy Endings, I will never remember. Six Six Sick was downstairs and eventually Disco Down was upstairs, but I don’t think that party existed at the time. Happy Endings was such a fun place to party. This particular night I actually stopped off at Lit first. I think it was a party called Rebel Rebel, but don’t quote me on that. I don’t have anything specific to note, other than I shot a couple bathroom nudes at both bars and that’s going to be a running theme because I uploaded a whole gallery of NSFW photos from this week to Girls of Driven By Boredom.

Wednesday was High Voltage. It was one of the first parties I started going to in New York and I think Dimitry was the first person to ever pay me to shoot a party. It was either him or DJ Jess, but we will get to that on Friday… High Voltage started at Sutra and then moved over to 200 Orchard before finally ending up at The Annex where we were on this particular evening. I didn’t shoot a ton of photos this night for some reason but there are so many photos of people I love in the few shots I did take. My first girlfriend in NYC was there and at least three people that I consider real friends to this day. I fucking loved Wednesdays.

Thursday was either back at Lit of back at Happy Endings or more likely both. I texted DJ RekLES to ask him what the Happy Endings party was and he told me it was called Steam Machine, but I don’t believe him because that is not even slightly familiar. It was hosted by him and Sean Roberts and Antwan and Julius Onah who directs fucking Marvel movies now. Wild. This night I had my friend Alex visiting and he and a few of his friends were crashing at my place. I ended up photographing the two girls he was with naked in the Happy Endings bathroom, and also my friend Tracy who I used to take photos of a lot back then. Fortunately for you guys, you can see all that stuff only on Girls of DBB. As far as the Lit party goes, that was called NC-17 and it was thrown by DJ Jess and Jeremy Bastard. It was a very different crowd by the always had go-go dancers and Lit was such a grimey place I knew I was gonna get someone naked or make out with someone in a bathroom. Honestly that night I took so many photos of people making out but I only photographed one person nude: my old pal Apathy who I have photographed naked more than maybe anyone on earth. Again those are over on Girls of DBB… I should also mention that I think Girls and Boys was on Thursdays at Hiro Ballroom back then. It was a blast and I photographed it a handful of times, but none in August 2007.

Friday nights were two of the best parties of all time: Ruff Club and Trash. Ruff Club was at Annex and it was the very first party I ever went to as a New York resident. Trash was at Rififi at the time and was maybe the first party I got paid to shoot. It was hosted by DJ Jess as well (and Twig and Alex) and lasted longer than any of these parties. Jess was such an important part of my life and I will miss that dude forever. Nearly every Friday I would take the J train to the LES for Ruff and then head up to Trash in the East Village and then take the L Train home (or vice versa). I am actually including two Friday’s in this gallery because one of them I only went to Trash. For some reason on the Ruff Club night I mostly shot photos outside of the club, it was probably insanely hot inside, and I don’t have any photos of the “Ruff Kids”. Both Trash galleries feature so many people I love and of course a tiny bit of nudity…

Misshapes ruled Saturday nights but it was at Don Hills and it was so far away and I had some dumb beef with one of the Misshapes so I rarely went and never photographed it. The party had ended by this time anyways and I think their short lived Wednesday night party Bleached was gone too. Saturday’s for me at that time was Rated X at Luke & Leroy’s (and Robot Rock across the street before that party ended). Rated X was the wildest weekly party. It was thrown by Theo Kagan, Michael T, Jess and Peppermint Gummybear who hosted the insane Hot Body Contest. The whole party was designed to be debaucherous. If you checked your pants at coat check you got discount drinks and they would do a late night hour of two for one well drinks. Somehow they also let 18 year olds in so it was always full of these SVA kids who were fresh out on their own and partying so fucking hard. The aforementioned hot body contest was a complete shit show of nudity and chaos. This is the party you’d think I would have the most NSFW photos from, but the hot body contest was so wild I don’t really want to put anyone on blast all these years later. I do have a few mildly safe for work photos in this gallery, and a few in the paid gallery but only because I think some of the people were in the adult industry so I am sure they don’t care if their nudes are online. Oh, I almost completely forgot, that night I also went to see Andrew WK play at Highline Ballroom, a venue I almost completely forgot about. I almost didn’t include these because it didn’t make a ton of sense for this breakdown of what I did in a given week, but it was a lot of fun and there are some great photos in there.

Sundays really belonged to the Smiths party at Sway. I have photographed that party so many times and I think it existed back then, but Sway, like it’s neighbor Don Hills, was a pain in the ass to get to and I don’t like the Smiths. I still always had a blast there. I have some super memorable nights in my life that happened at Sway. Back then Sundays was also a bit of a day off. I would sometimes shoot a monthly, like the industrial/fetish party Byte at the Delancey or Bowie Ball. If Motherfucker fell on a Sunday I would always be there, but none of that stuff was weekly so I am not including any of that in this gallery.

So yeah, speaking of galleries, this gallery is probably the biggest I have ever posted. It has five hundred and forty nine photos. If you see less than that it’s because someone didn’t want photos of them making out with a stranger when they were a kid online in 2026. I feel you and I am happy to take it down. There’s also that NSFW gallery of 60 something images over on Girls of Driven By Boredom, and that takedown request goes double for those. Not trying to fuck up anyone’s life which is mostly why all that stuff is paywalled. So yeah enjoy, and check out the Vintage DBB Instagram all this week because I plan on posting highlights from each night on there on the corresponding day. (Tag me if you post em.)

Okay go look at all the photos!

Lit Lounge 8th Anniversary – 2.22.10

June 29, 2026July 16, 2026

I have had these photos ready to go for months now. That whole getting hacked thing caused most of the delay because even though we recently solved that problem the one thing that we lost permanently was my old archives. I had an internal use only version of my old website that didn’t have any of the images, just the text, that way I could go back and check my archives. I could pull up a random folder, like for example a folder only called 2.22.10 and then I could type 2.22.10 into my archival site and pull up that night. I could then see what the party was, what I was doing in my life and what happened that night. It was a great tool and it was deleted forever.

My former webmaster thought she had a back up so she sent me those files, I sent them to the guy who unfucked my website and he uploaded all the files she sent and it turns out it was just some random early version of the current site that only had four posts. No idea what happened there. Since then, I have found my backup of the site, but it’s not the archive site, it’s just the whole ass website, so I can hopefully build back a new archives site, but that probably won’t happen for a while because I have spent all my money on my goddamn house. Anyway long story short I don’t have my notes from February 22nd, 2010… but I do have some memories.

First things first I know it was Lit Lounge’s 8th anniversary party. I actually had to look up which anniversary it was, but I knew it was an anniversary. Lit was one of my all time favorite bars. Before I even moved to NYC one of the best days of my life ended dancing at Lit (it almost ended at an emergency room, but that’s another story). The bar had an art gallery in the back, and incredibly seedy basement, and multiple lockable bathrooms. There are not a lot of places on earth more conducive to debauchery.

The other thing I remember from this night, is that earlier that day the US beat Canada in a huge Olympic hockey game. We of course then lost to them in the gold medal game in heartbreaking fashion, but the reason I remember that day is because in the Lit photo gallery there are a few photos that I shot on a 70-200mm lens, and it’s the only time I have ever brought that lens to the club and the only reason I brought it to the club was because I brought it to watch US hockey at a bar in the East Village and the only reason I brought it to that bar in the first place was because I had just bought it and it was snowing and I had my friend Vicky meet me at the bar and we shot topless photos in the snow. I actually really loved those photos and I am going to re-edit those right now and upload them to Girls of Driven By Boredom, so if you are seeing this, they are up there right now.

You know I love a tangent, but let’s get back to it… What else? For some reason that POS rapist Ron Jeremy was there that night. I used to run into him all the time and he always sucked even before I knew all the shit he did. Aside from that, so, so many of my friends were there and so many girls I had crushes on and went on one date and then just became friends with after it didn’t work out because I was a mess back then. I guess I wasn’t so bad if they still wanted to be friends with me, but I was not really someone anyone took seriously as a romantic partner. Oh and speaking of dates, the girl who I went on my first ever internet dating site date was randomly at the party. We lived in Richmond, VA and we met on a site called Make Out Club (iykyk). She moved to NYC first and then when I moved there she moved back to RVA, but just happened to be in NYC that night.

Anyway, I honestly don’t really remember anything else and this has gone on long enough, but I know people are going to dig these photos because pretty much everyone from like 5 different downtown scenes was there because Lit had something different going on every night. Shit, even my terrible punk band used to play there. Man I miss that spot.

Anyway check the gallery below, and then if you feel like it you can go look at some photos of my old friend Vicky topless in the snow taken earlier that day. She isn’t in this gallery at all, but I promise you will dig the photos if you like that sort of thing. Okay bye.

Roxy’s Playhouse – 10.15.09

February 3, 2026

Yesterday I was digging through my archives in the “2009” folder trying to find some classic party pictures to post for you guys. I have some stuff pulled already, but all of them seemed like a lot of work so I was looking for something that didn’t require a 1000 word essay, a bunch of googling and an hour of editing. I saw that in October, 2009 I had a bunch of folders for each day. I guess the CMJ music festival was right around this time. I opened one of two October 15th folder and found a bunch of really fun photos from a party that Pepsi through with my friend Roxy Cottontail and figured this would be the perfect thing to post today.

“The Pepsi DJ Collective at Roxy’s Playhouse” wasn’t part of CMJ and I don’t even know what the fuck the Pepsi DJ Collective was, but I do know they paid me to take photos and I think it was a pretty nice check, so I should probably add Pepsi as a client to my resume, if I had a resume. It’s weird to think of all the huge brands that have paid me to take drunken party pictures in sweaty night clubs… or in this case sweaty Williamsburg warehouses.

If you don’t know Roxy, she’s a legendary DJ who came up with Diplo and the Hollertonix crew out of Philly. By the time I moved to Brooklyn she was already NYC staple and we did a lot of parties together. These days she’s still doing here thing but she also hosts a podcast about those good old days of NYC nightlife. Wait, come to think of it, why haven’t I been on her podcast? In all seriousness, Roxy rules and I was psyched to get the invite to shoot this late night madness care of a corporate sponsor.

As for the event, the DJs were Roxy, Diplo, DJ Drama and Eli Escobar and there was a performance by Maluca who I always had such a big crush on. In fact in this gallery I have a photo of her and rapper Amanda Blank who was my other musical crush back in those days. It was cool to find those photos. Speaking of cool photos to find. I found one of my friends AK Murda and Ease Da Man, both of whom we sadly lost. Two other friends gone before their time, legendary bassist Andy Rorke and one of my favorite models Vicky, are in these galleries as well. It’s crazy how many people I knew back then are gone. I miss them all.

There are so many notable nightlife and music folk in these photos that I can’t begin to name them all but just take a look for yourself. If you were around back then you’ll see so many notable faces. I should mention that OG Major Lazer hype man Skerrit Bwoy was performing with Diplo as was Telli from Ninjasonik who had just dropped a remix of Major Lazer’s Hold the Line. In my original write up from that night I talked about how much fun that was.

Looking back on this it seems like this was a great time, but in my original write up I was so nonchalant about the whole thing because it was just another night back then. Any of those folders from 2009 could have opened up and been something just as legendary. What a time to be alive.

Okay that’s all I got. I spent too much time on this one already but it’s only 600 words so I didn’t get too carried away. Check out all the photos below from The Pepsi DJ Collective at Roxy’s Playhouse.

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…

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.