2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos: Day 1
I got back from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos a few days ago but I have taken my sweet time to post these because most of them are already online via the LA Weekly (and all the other Voice Media papers). I will post all those links in part four of this madness. In past years I have broken these photos down by subject but this is my 8th god damn one of these and I just wanna get these photos up and move on with my life. The plan is two posts today and two posts tomorrow and then on to whatever comes next.
Let’s start by talking about what every juggalo in the festival was talking about: Oklahoma sucks. The Gathering was supposed to be in Colorado but several venues fell through because the FBI designates juggalos as a gang because apparently the FBI has never actually met a juggalo. At the last minute they found this place called Lost Lakes Amphitheater in Oklahoma City and it turned out to be kinda a disaster for a bunch of reasons. First of all beer in Oklahoma is watered down which is like some shit I thought they only pulled in Utah. All hard liquor was theoretically outlawed and the place was full of undercover cops were arresting people for selling drugs and supposedly public nudity. I saw supposedly because I only heard rumors but all the nudity got shut down. Not sure how you can even call it a festival with everyone sober and clothed. The place also had weird cut off times for music, it was hot as balls, it was far from the midwest where most juggalos live, it was spread out over miles and the line up sucked. There were probably a third of the juggalos there as normal It was a total bummer.
Aside from all that it was not completely terrible. The combination of the brutal heat and the line up sucking meant I showed up late every day and still managed to take a million fucking photos. I didn’t have to worry about shooting the bands so I could focus on just shooting juggalos cause I knew I couldn’t sell any of the band photos. Oh and my hotel had a pool plus Gia Paige came with me for three of the four days. So really it was chill as fuck.
Day one I only had one gallery due and I flew in to Oklahoma City that day so I didn’t get down to the Gathering until about 7pm. I had an hour of light to get a few shots and then popped on the flash. Mushroomhead headlined and they are real weird looking so I took photos of them and then hung out with Mike Busey and his “Busey Beauties” who have been the highlight of the last few Gatherings. They had to keep stuff PG and they shut down their stage at 11pm cause of the stupid noise rules so I just hung out with them on their bus mostly. It was air conditioned, full of strippers and there was a pug. 0 complaints.
Anyway, that’s all I got for the first update. Day two is coming in a few hours. It’s a much bigger gallery.
