Day three of the Juggalos was pretty productive. Most of the day was spent following professional wrestler and viral video sensation Jeff Hardy around for a profile the LA Weekly. We followed him from his hotel room to the Gathering and took shots of him getting ready for his headlining fight at Juggalo Championship  Wrestling’s yearly event Bloodymania. It was a lot of fun since he was one of my favorite wrestlers as a kid and I found out he’s only a couple years older than me. Apparently he started wrestling on TV at age 16.

But before we met up with Jeff I also got to shoot part of WolfPac’s annual juggalo fight club. I saw two matches, the first of which was fairly brutal (see face below). The winner of the day goes on to fight the previous champion Nebraska Warrior who I have spent a few years documenting for different outlets. I hope to catch that championship fight today. I haven’t seen Nebraska yet and I kinda love that guy.

Yesterday was also a fairly nudity filled one. I got to do a proper photo shoot with Sydney Krey, one of the Busey Beauties I met last year. She is such a babe and we shot behind some toilets which is a pretty classic Driven By Boredom vibe I think. I also randomly stumbled into one of the tents last night where they were apparently having a foam party but it was mostly just some naked girls on stage. Good times.

Oh, I should also mention that the wrestling event Bloody Mania was kinda amazing. One of the longest tenured JCW wrestlers (and one of Violent J’s best friends) Rude Boy announced that he was diagnosed with dementia from wrestling head injuries and had to retire. It was heartbreaking and I did not expect to be tearing up at a juggalo wrestling event. Violent J also wrestled for the first time in 8 years. He gained a ton of weight and lost all of it since last year. He did a moonsault off the top rope and was honestly impressive. More on all this later in a separate post so only the wrestling nerds have to read it, but for now links to my coverage in other outlets.

Oh, wait. Did I mention I saw fucking Slick Rick?!

• Noisy: Faces Of The Gathering Of The Juggalos
• LA Weekly Slideshow: The Weirdest Signs of the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos
• LA Weekly Slideshow: The Maniacs of Juggalo Wrestling
• How to Have Fun at Your First Gathering: Juggalos Impart Advice to a Newbie
• Donald Trump and Juggalos Have More in Common Than You Might Think

And now 5 random photos…

I got down to the Gathering pretty late yesterday. One of the writers I am with from the LA Weekly decided to make his own juggalo toy out of a Big Boy bank he bought at breakfast and it became a whole thing. I actually built a fake website for the toy today and he actually sold it at the Gathering. Incredibly stupid but it might make for a pretty good article (that I will post once it’s up).

When I got there a documentary filmmaker doing something on juggalos convinced me to do an interview and by the time that was over I only had an hour or so of good light. I still got some pretty decent shots before Gwar went on. Gwar did some insane political show where they murdered Obama, Trump and Hillary and sprayed a lot of pink blood on everyone. Good times. Violent J of ICP also preformed his solo album Wizard of the Hood with the help of Shaggy and Twiztid and a bunch of dwarves. Real weird.

Late night I shot some wrasslin’ because the LA Weekly is doing a story about wrestling at the Gathering. There will be a lot more of that tonight. Unfortunately I am kinda terrible at shooting wrestling and didn’t bring a long lens so all of that stuff will probably be horrible, but I am sure I will get enough decent shots for the article.

Very last thing we did was head to the Busey Beauties party which was a fucking insane but pretty much everything they do is nuts so yeah.

This is an incredibly boring update but I am unreasonably exhausted and I still have two more days of this. I am pretty sure I am going to die soon.

Here’s some of my LA Weekly coverage posted since yesterday:

• The Most Beautiful People of the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos
• Juggalo Pride: The Tattoos of the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos
• 10 Things You Can Buy From Random Strangers at Gathering of the Juggalos by Andy Hermann

And now here are five random photos from the day…

Yesterday was fucking exhausting but I managed to take 700 photos and didn’t at all die which is a success no matter how you look at it. I have no idea how I am going to make it through four days of this with four or five clients but I gotta make a living somehow and it’s better than a real job right?

I didn’t get to see much music yesterday because I was mostly out shooting juggalos but I got to see Rittz and Tech N9ne. Tech is always fucking amazing and he plays every year so I always make sure to pay attention to his set. Today Gwar is playing which should be cool but over all there isn’t a ton of music this year I am excited about.

Mike Busey and his Busey Beauties are back and I hung out with them a bit last night but didn’t shoot a ton of photos. Will make up for that today since everyone seems to fucking love those shots. I did shoot a bunch of naked juggalettes which everyone also seems to love so there should be bunch of weird nudity this year if that’s important to you.

Here’s some links from my LA Weekly coverage so far:

• Day one gallery on the LA Weekly
• Juggalos Are The New Ravers by Andy Hermann
• I Think I’ve Been a Juggalo My Whole Life and Just Didn’t Know It by Art Tavana

And now here’s some random photos for you to look at…

Today I am going to  jump on a plane to Columbus, Ohio and then drive another hour to Heath, Ohio where my hotel is and then finally drive another 25 minutes to get to Thornville, Ohio home of the Gathering of the Juggalos. This will be my 7th straight trip to the most insane music festival on the planet and while I tell myself every year that this is my last year, I keep coming back.

If you do a Google Image search for “juggalo” I have taken nearly half the photos on there. Seriously, it’s wild. I have taken every juggalo photo I ever need to take, but somehow the Gathering keeps calling me back. Part of it is that I am one of the only photographers who will go to this thing so I can pick up a bunch of clients really easily and make a bunch of money for the same amount of work. Another part is that juggalos kinda make the internet explode so it’s pretty good for my social networks and hits and shit like that I have to care about. But I also go cause it’s actually a lot of fun. It’s completely lawless, totally fucking mental and there’s always a few rad bands that play.

So yeah, get excited for this shit. I know I am. In the mean time, I gotta give you some content….

Back in 2013 I shot a “Girls of the Gathering of the Juggalos” feature for Hustler Magazine. Well I took so many fucking photos for them and the article was only 8 pages or something. I meant to post those photos many years ago but I just never did for some reason. So today when I was trying to find something to post I ran into like 7 unpublished sets shot at the Gathering including a pretty amazing set of Pepper Kester and this really fun shoot I did with a girl named Kinky Carnival on actual carnival rides! She was with this band Wolfpac that goes to the Gathering every year and I shot a bunch of their girls for the Hustler article. This one was my favorite though.

So here are three free NSFW photos and I put the full set on Girls of Driven By Boredom. Eventually I am going to do a big dump of all these photos from 2013 but keep the sets as Girls of DBB exclusives. That seems like a good way not to overload my site with juggalos but also give my paying fans some weird bonus content and get all these photos up finally.

So go to Girls of Driven By Boredom for this pretty large set of Kinky Carnival photos and then come back here for hopefully daily 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos updates. By the way if you don’t already follow my Snapchat you probably should for this one…