Okay kids, we did it. We have reached our final update of the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos. Well, technically I did do a photoshoot with a certain juggalette that will eventually be posted, but I wanna get some other stuff up on here first before I return to that. Gotta spread out the content a little bit right? 

So let’s go through everything we posted already just for a recap and handy links for you guys

• Juggalo Portraits
• Miss Juggalette Contest (NSFW link here)
• Musical Artists
• Juggalos After Dark (Queen of the Cheeks NSFW link here)
• Faygo Wet T-Shirt Contest & More NSFW Juggalo Madness (NSFW link here)

I also shot photos for Brooklyn Vegan this year. This coverage is just highlights from everything I posted here, but there are a few slightly different edits and there’s some NSFW stuff that wasn’t paywalled so if you want a preview of what’s behind the curtain, the Brooklyn Vegan post is a good place to look.  

So what do I have left for you guys? Well it’s mostly just shit that didn’t fit into the other galleries. It’s only about 50 photos of the 800 I pulled from the 4000 I shot, but we got some fun stuff. We have crowd shots, random environment shots, people playing that carnival game where you try and climb a ladder and then fall off because it’s hard to keep your center of gravity in the same place while moving up a ladder. We have three whole shots from the Freakshow Deluxe sideshow thing. There are a few more in the misc NSFW gallery as well, but I didn’t shoot a ton of it because I got there late and I have photographed a lot of side show performances in my life. I can even do a few sideshow tricks myself, and by tricks I mean I can take your reading glasses and shove them into my brain which is just a bad time for everyone involved. 

Honestly half this gallery is the piñata event that takes place every year. It’s not officially part of the Gathering but this dude named Poncho walks around collecting stuff from juggalos for a piñata and then on the last day people break it open and everyone scurries like rats to get the prizes inside. I have seen some crazy stuff put in there from stickers to drugs to sex toys to cash, so it’s really fun to watch people swarm to get their treasures. This year the piñata was way too hard to break open so eventually everyone just gave up and ripped it apart by hand.

Okay, and that’s a wrap on 2024. I keep telling myself this is my last year, but next year is the 25th anniversary and I can’t miss that right? Oh no. One of these days I gotta get my juggalo book finished and maybe I can finally retire then, but I am sure I will see you all next time. Whoop Whoop.

Click here to see the rest of the photos from the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

Okay this is going to be a weird post for a number of reasons. Honestly I am not sure this should be a standalone post, but I guess it’s the weekend so way less people will see it anyway. This issue is that I have a bunch of NSFW crowd shots that I threw up on Girls of Driven By Boredom the other day, mixed with a couple NSFW photos from Freakshow Deluxe and some shots from the Chapter 17 party and just some other assorted madness like a topless woman in a wheelchair crowd surfing. Now I would like to share all of this stuff with you, but I can’t so I put it on my pay site. 

The other thing I have for you is the Faygo Wet T-Shirt contest (shout out Clownvis) which is always wild and honestly that’s what this post is mostly about, but there aren’t any photos in it safe enough for public consumption. The whole shoot is on Girls of DBB like everything else. There’s also a video I put together from that that’s on the site as well. It’s $5 or free to subscribers, but again it’s all too NSFW to post any previews of. I am going to find a few photos I am comfortable posting below because I don’t know what else to do, but I don’t know, just sign up for my paysite. It’s very cheap and there are tens of thousands of nude photos on there so you will get your money’s worth I promise and you will be supporting my work which is the thing you care about the most obviously, not the half naked juggalettes covered in cheap soda, or pop like these midwest juggalos like the call it.

Okay, click here to go to Girls of Driven By Boredom for all the NSFW content and I will be back tomorrow with some stuff you can actually look at for free. 

As I mentioned in my last post, we got plenty of NSFW for you this year. I just get a surprisingly large amount of emails from people who want juggalette content and I want to deliver despite how much of a creep I feel sometimes shooting this stuff. I like to think of myself as some sort of journalist, and here we are photographing juggalettes shooting fireworks out of their… look, I am trying my best here.

I shot three NSFW events but the one I shot by far the most photos of was the Miss Juggalette pageant. I think I took over 400 of them plus some video and it was a pretty wild event. My old friend Zac Amico was one of the judges (along with Big Jay Oakerson, Angela Mazzanti and a 4th judge I feel terrible that I don’t know the name of) and I told him that Miss Juggalette can be really boring or completely insane and I was right. It was both.

The event started out pretty slowly with a ton of contestants and everyone just answering Clownvis’ random questions about themselves, but once the talent part of the contest started it got deeply weird. Some of the talents involved singing which didn’t go over well (except the opera singer!) and the three people who did balloon animals were not everyone’s cup of tea, but then there was a girl who did a dance routine that was “interrupted” by her getting a bucket of blood thrown on her (which caused every contestant to slip and slide around the stage and attracted dozens of bees). After that things got weirder and weirder, you had a graphic strip routine by Tat2Barbie, a woman who sat on a 2 liter of Faygo, a juggalette who was just slapping people and of course our fireworks shooting friend. 

The swimsuit contest was just an excuse for nearly everyone to get naked and it just devolved from there. The contest ended with everyone just dancing on stage in various states of undress. The crowd was pretty pumped. 

In the end Tat2Barbie won and cried and I got such a great shot of her, but I can’t post it on here cause we live in a puritanical nightmare, but you can check it out on my paywalled site of course. 

Speaking of the paywall situation, this gallery has 50 safe for work images. The actual gallery has nearly 200!! So that means there are 150 photos I shot that are too NSFW to post on here. I also posted a video of the event that is free if you are a member (or $5 if you aren’t). It’s only a minute long because I was shooting photos, but it’s pretty crazy. 

By the way, if you were in the contest, and want your photos, reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter and I will send you your photos. I would say email, but I don’t trust you motherfuckers, I need proof it’s you.

Okay, now click here to see the SFW 2024 Miss Juggalette pageant photos.

Or click here to see the NSFW ones.

It’s finally here! The first gallery of the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos. I hear from people all the time that these are the photos they are waiting all year for so I am glad I can deliver once again. For those somehow not in the know, the Gathering of the Juggalos is a four day music festival that is (usually) at Legend Valley campground in Thornville Ohio. The festival is thrown by the Insane Clown Posse for their fans, juggalos. I shot over 4000 photos that I have edited down to about 800 for you guys. I have seven posts featuring nine galleries and plenty of NSFW stuff. I hope you dig it. 

To start with, we of course have photos with juggalos. This gallery features the portraits of juggalos, during the daytime. We are going to have a post with all the night time stuff so there will be more portraits in there so if I took your picture and you are looking for it, there’s still a lot more to go. This actually brings me to a good point, which is that I love shooting this event for two totally different audiences. I love that juggalos love to see their photos here, but I also love that people on the outside love looking at this stuff. 

The Gathering of the Juggalos is honestly the place I feel most appreciated as a photographer. I almost feel like a celebrity there. I can’t tell you how many people want a selfie or just wanna tell me how much they love my photography. That shit really makes me feel good when I have spent most of the year since I moved just feeling very uninspired. But the thing I appreciate the most is the juggalos who tell me how much it means to them that while I have photographer juggalos for a lot of major media outlets, I am never there to clown them, no pun intended. Hearing from photography subjects that they think I paint them (again no pun intended) in a fair light is a great compliment for a journalist. I think over the last 15 or so years I have tried to do my best to show that juggalos are more than how they have been treated in the media, and I honestly think that I have had an impact on the way people see juggalos.

Okay, enough of me blowing myself, let’s get into this. Despite shooting 4000 photos I actually tried to take it easy this year. I didn’t shoot much of the daytime stuff, aside from a few of the NSFW events because I know what you guys need from me. I would come down each night between 5 and 6pm to catch the dusk and the best light, then shoot the bands and then go the fuck back to my hotel because I am old and I hate shooting with a flash these days. I did cover a few after midnight things, but we will get to that later.

Okay. like I said, this is a gallery of juggalo portraits. My favorite shots from this gallery were already up on Brooklyn Vegan, there’s a ton more shots that I didn’t give them as well. Also, I should mention that all the NSFW photos from the Gathering are going to be unfortunately behind a paywall. I have explained this before but my gallery system broke and I don’t have the skill or money to fix it, so I have been posting stuff on Flickr. Flickr won’t let you post adult content anymore, so that leaves the most fun photos reserved for Girls of Driven By Boredom. Obviously, I like it when you give me money, but it legit pisses me off that I am in this situation. I got a ton of good shots this year that have a bit of nudity and I wish I could share them with everyone. One of these days I will get the money together to redo my website, but for now my pay site is as cheap as the site will let me so you guys can sign up and you will get decades of nudes and juggalette coverage. Just saying. Seriously 5 of my 9 galleries are paywalled, and one of them is already up, so get over there already.

Now click here to see juggalo portraits at the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos!

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. 

It’s all over, we made it to the last post. Will we have to wait another whole year for juggalo content? Only time will tell but this is a wrap for the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos. All we got left is the music stuff, and it’s the largest gallery of them all. I got over 250 band photos to share with you guys, and some Riff Raff related drama to share and I will try and speak about every artist I photographed and maybe a few I didn’t. Let’s begin…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t shoot much the first night I was there. I didn’t get in until horrorcore legends NATAS were playing but it was too late to shoot them. So we start on day two when I photographed Korihor and by photographed I mean I took like two photos of them from the crowd because I missed the beginning of their set photographing the wet t-shirt contest. I feel like you understand. After that the 90s rock/grunge band Sponge played. They are from Detroit like ICP so that makes sense I think. You would absolutely know their song Plowed if you heard it. Speaking of 90s bands, Arrested Development was up next. Their first album was the first CD I ever owned and I was psyched to see them. They were great and juggalos absolutely loved them. A mosh pit broke out during Everyday People which was incredible. 

After they ended Riff Raff went on and people seemed excited about it. I barely knew that dude made music, but juggalos were like singing along to his songs. Despite what would have been a mostly positive reception he seemed terrified of the juggalos. He didn’t leave the very back of the stage, mostly hiding behind the DJ booth. Obviously some juggalos threw some Faygo at him, because that’s what they do, but he reacted to it with abject horror. Once juggalos saw that they of course started throwing more shit at him. He brought out a bodyguard which was hilarious to everyone. He forced his boys to go out in front of him and knock stuff down. He then proceeded to perform backstage. Eventually he brought out a second security guard and one of his crew had an actual umbrella and was trying to protect him. At some point a can of Faygo missed him by a few feet and he got splashed and ran backstage to jeers and laughter. It was fucking embarrassing. I posted a video of it and he responded with some hilarious shit about how he had paid for his whole crew to get new hair cuts or something. He deleted the Tweet a few hours later but that didn’t stop my Twitter mentions from becoming a garbage dump. Oh well. 

The mainstage headliners were ICP doing a “Wicked Clowns From Outer Space” show which was based on a tour they did in 1999 which I might actually have gone to back in the day. I don’t really need to do a write up about the Insane Clown Posse again, but if you ever are in a situation where you could see ICP live, I highly recommend it. Even if you hate the music, they are incredible live. Like, one of the best live acts I have ever seen even in 2023. 

Part of being middle aged with a back injury and having photographed the Gathering 13 times is that I tend to go home early. I get there late, go home early, get enough photos and try not to kill myself. So I usually head back to the hotel after the headlining band. Occasionally I do stick around for a late night act or two, and on Thursday night RA The Rugged Man was playing. I enjoy his music, we have mutual friends and he always puts on a good show so I figured I would check out at least part of his set. He did his thing as usual but at some point the mics stopped working so he just grabbed a juggalo’s megaphone and jumped into the crowd. It was a sharp contrast to the Riff Raff set, which RA made clear when he said “I don’t care if you all hit me with a cinder block, I’m not leaving!” He also brought a ton of juggalos on stage, had two juggalette’s serving booze to the crowd and brought out a rapper named Reverie Love who absolutely killed it. I was about leave when my friend mentioned that D Loc of Kottonmouth Kings was playing next. His team had reached out to me about filming something for them, but they weren’t trying to pay me so that didn’t happen, but I figured I could at least shoot a few songs of their set. Finally around 1:30am I escaped the Gathering. 

Day three started off with Whitney Peyton. She’s played the Gathering a bunch and when I first saw her I didn’t really think much of it, but the last couple times she put on an incredible show, so I knew I had to check out her set and I made the right decision. She crowd walked, talked shit about Riff Raff, stole my hat at one point and performed a couple songs from the mosh pit. Towards the end of her set I Tweeted a video of her in the crowd to contrast the Riff Raff shit and when I looked up she was in a kiddie pool crowd surfing. It was great. My only complaint was that she decided that she wanted pink bubbles during her set and you couldn’t even tell they were pink but they covered my hat, vest and camera with little pink dots that I still can’t get out of the grip of my lens. 

After Whitney was Ritz who is another rapper I have seen at the Gathering a bunch and then Mac Sabbath who are a McDonald’s themed band that does like Black Sabbath parody songs about fast food. I don’t really know why they exist but I am really glad I got to photograph them. Also, as I mentioned before my friend’s boyfriend was working for them so I ended up hanging out with him after their set during the headliner Ouija Macc, but before that happened we had a set from Yelawolf who I have photographed a bunch of times. Every time I am at the Gathering I make sure to do a good job photographing Ouija Mac, not only is he the most popular non ICP act at the Gathering but he’s the absolutely nicest dude and he’s managed by friends of mine. I had to get a quick quote from him for my Daily Beast article and I ended up missing City Morgue’s set the next day because we were just talking about whatever and now we are talking about me going out on tour with him for a few dates this fall. So yeah, we fuck with Ouija. 

On the final day of the Gathering I didn’t shoot a ton of bands, as I mentioned I missed City Morgue who were the pre-ICP headliners. I did shoot Alien Ant Farm who apparently still exist. I also shot Krizz Kaliko who has been at the Gathering a bunch. He’s on TechN9ne’s record label Strange Music which is a label that juggalos to tattoo to themselves. Penultimately I photographed a short set from the Sugarhill Gang. I think they only have one original member and they only did three songs but it was still amazing. So glad I saw that. 

Finally ICP did their second space themed set. I threw on a poncho and another poncho for my camera and did what I could to get some decent shots. I have photographed ICP like 20 times and I am not sure I have ever taken a photo of them that I love. It’s just really hard to shoot a backlit band that throws sticky liquid at you the entire time, but we do what we can. After the three songs we were allowed to shoot I threw away the rain gear and shot some of the crowd and then decided it would be a good idea to photograph the “Faygo Armageddon”. During their last song they bring tons of people on stage to throw the rest of the remaining Faygo into the crowd. I’ve actually done it twice and it’s one of the most fun things I have ever done. Unfortunately I had thrown away my rain gear and I got soaked in the process. I ran into a juggalo at my hotel that night and he told me he saw me get destroyed and keep going back. Luckily they ended up being some of my favorite band shots of the Gathering so I guess it was worth it. Plus it started raining right after the set so I got a little less sticky (and a little more wet).

And that ends another Gathering of the Juggalos. I hope you enjoyed the ride. I am sure we will do it again next year, and hopefully by then I will be a little closer to my juggalo book…

Now click here to see all the photos from the musical acts of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a place where there are very few rules, basically don’t fuck with other juggalos is the only one. Cops drive around from time to time just to make sure no one is killing themselves but they drive right past people selling drugs without blinking. I actually overheard a cop say “I have done a lot in my career but until now, no one has ever walked up and handed me Molly”. People set off fireworks in the middle of the mosh pit, they launch slingshots of god knows what at people and they spend a lot of time in the nude. 

Sadly we live in a world far more conservative than the Gathering of the Juggalos and because of bullshit laws created my extreme religious groups under the guise of “child safety” it is getting increasingly difficult to put nudity on the Internets. Now, I have my own website and there’s nothing to stop me from uploading nudes, except my gallery system broke and no one knows how to fix it and I cannot afford to fix it. Flickr has been my solution, but they don’t allow nudity unless you have a pro account which is like $75 a year, so I said fuck it, let’s do that. But turns out, if you post nudity you can only see the gallery if you have your own Flickr account which no one does because it’s not 2010. I had no idea so for the first several hours my post was up the other day, people were getting 404 errors. God damnit. 

So long story short, all the nudity from this year’s Gathering of the Juggalos is on my pay site, Girls of Driven By Boredom. I can’t even post it on my OnlyFans because they don’t allow public nudity, so it’s just all fucked. That being said, I did post some old unpublished, not public, juggalette videos on my OnlyFans this week because I wanted to keep it consistent. You’re welcome. Anyway, let’s get into it.

On day two of the Gathering I photographed the wet t-shirt contest. That thing is always insane and this year was no exception. Juggalettes had gone wild. Wild I say! I guess I don’t really have anything to say except, the wet t-shirts were gone pretty quickly and it just became a “show me your butthole!” contest.

Speaking of buttholes, the Queen Of Cheeks contest was even wilder. I was far too close to the stage to handle it honestly. I was exhausted and honestly not prepared for giant juggallette butts being jiggled and spread six inches from my face. At some point I just put my camera down and my head in my hand. The Gathering had won. But, if you wanna see how many women can walk across the stage with a Faygo in their butt cheeks, I have just the photos for you.

Surprisingly the tamest of the events was the Miss Juggalette Contest, which has been historically fucking wild. There was some nudity (even a little juggalette dick) but mostly just people doing “talents” which were primarily rapping poorly (the woman who won was pretty good). I really half assed from a photo perspective because my back hurt, I was tired and it was hot as hell out so I just sat on the side of the stage for most of it. Towards the end I got back down into the pit, but you aren’t missing much. 

Lastly, I had about twenty random NSFW juggalette photos (and one juggalo who asked me if I wanted to take a picture of his dick. Who am I to say no?) I put all those in the Miss Juggalette gallery on Girls of DBB just to fill it out a bit. 

So yeah, enjoy the tame preview photos before and then click the link to my (very affordable) pay site which contains like tens of thousands of nudes from my entire career. It’s worth the $10 or whatever it costs to join. 

So click here to see all the NSFW Madness At The 2023 Gathering Of The Juggalos!

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. 

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!